When reportage takes its cue from the truth and not from a preferred narrative, the armed identity and organizational role of the dead become matters of public importance.

From the viewpoint of those who once carried arms in the countryside, the clashes in Toboso and Cauayan represent further confirmation that the armed revolution in Negros has entered its final phase, not just tactical defeats or temporary setbacks as portrayed by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army. Those who have lived the reality of the NPA’s internal dynamics offer a particularly sobering assessment of the situation in Negros. Former rebels

For ordinary Filipinos, these charades do not provide clarity but only exhaustion. We are tired and distrustful.

A former student leader from and member of was among five individuals killed in an armed encounter between government troops and alleged members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) in Cauayan, Negros Occidental on May 16. The fatality was identified by the Philippine Army as Francis Vince Y. Dingding, a University of the Philippines - Cebu Computer Science alumnus who allegedly served as a political instructor of the Southeast Front-D of the

Those student leaders casually affirming armed struggle today are dangerously detached from the realities of armed struggle.