Probe sought on murder of Negros peasant leader
Human rights group Karapatan is urging authorities to look into the killing of a peasant leader late Tuesday night, two days before Christmas Day, at her own home in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental, claiming it was carried out under the government’s anti-insurgency program.
Two men wearing bonnets tore down the door of Warlita Jimenez’s home in Sitio Makilo, Barangay Camansi in Kabankalan City at around 11 p.m. of Dec. 23, entered her room and shot her multiple times, according to reports.
The 55-year-old Jimenez was the widow of farmer leader Joseph Jimenez, who was killed along with National Democratic Front peace consultant and poet Ericson Acosta in an alleged encounter with Army soldiers in Sitio Makilo, Barangay Camansi, Kabankalan, in November 2022.
‘Blood in Negros’
“While families marked the Christmas season and gathered in celebration, and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. spews words of hypocrisy ‘not to forget the poor, the sick, victims of calamities, and marginalized sectors of society,’ his state forces once again spilled blood in Negros,” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said in a statement.
“This is the Marcos Jr. regime’s so-called national security agenda—one that is steeped in state terror and violence, even during the holidays,” she added.
There was no immediate comment from the military.
But according to the police, Jimenez’s killing came days after New People’s Army (NPA) rebels killed Alberto “Amay” Jimenez, Joseph Jimenez’s brother who was reportedly a “military asset,” in Barangay Camansi, Kabankalan, on Dec. 13.
Karapatan and local rights groups September 21 Movement–South Negros and Human Rights Advocates in Negros called for an impartial investigation into Jimenez’s death and all the extrajudicial killings in the region.
The groups also pressed the President to stop militarization in the area by recalling Memorandum Order No. 32, which was issued by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte in 2018. It directed the deployment of more soldiers and policemen to Samar, Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental and the Bicol region to “suppress lawless violence [and] acts of terror.”
Surveillance
After her husband’s death, Jimenez had been under surveillance and harassment, in which she was repeatedly asked by military personnel to admit being a member of the NPA and turn herself in to barangay officials, according to Karapatan.
At the time of her killing, she was an active member of Pammaca, an association of small farmers and agrarian reform advocates in Barangay Camansi. She was reportedly fighting for the association to acquire a farmland it is cultivating in the barangay.
“The murder of Warlita Jimenez is part of a long and bloody pattern of state-sponsored violence in Negros, where entire families are hunted down, tortured and killed,” Palabay said.
“We are enraged at how state terror in Negros target whole of families and communities. The killings are clearly not done randomly, or unplanned, as the families had become targets of malicious tagging, harassment and surveillance, right before they were killed,’’ she added.
51 EJK victims
Karapatan documented at least 51 peasants who were victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in Negros from July 2022 to November 2025 on the watch of Mr. Marcos. This could not be immediately verified with the Commission on Human Rights.
According to the group, the victims included Rolly Fausto, his wife Imelda and their two sons who were killed inside their hut in Sitio Kangkiling, Barangay Buenavista, Himamaylan City, on the night of June 14, 2023. The couple had been Red-tagged by the military for their involvement in a peasant organization, Karapatan said.
The group also called for the revocation of anti-insurgency measures, including Executive Order No. 70 which created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, and the National Action Plan on Peace, Unity, and Development, the agency’s framework to end the armed conflict by 2028, incidentally the concluding year of Mr. Marcos’ term.
Karapatan said activists and their families had fallen victim to the government’s counterinsurgency practice of Red-tagging even without solid proof.
Since Mr. Marcos took office in June 2022 until November this year, Karapatan said it had recorded 134 extrajudicial killings as well as the enforced disappearances of 14 people. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
