NDFP Peace Consultant Killed While Meeting Peasants In Cagayan

October 2, 2024

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) condemns the killing of another National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultant, Ariel Arbitrario, in Barangay Baliuag, Peñablaca, Cagayan, northern Philippines last September 11.

Reports indicate that the 502nd Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, captured and tortured Ariel Arbitrario prior to killing him. Additionally, two other members of the New People’s Army (NPA) were killed. Arbitrario was reportedly conducting consultations with farmers in the area at the time of his arrest.

Arbitrario should have been immune from surveillance, arrest, and harm, as he was a holder of Document of Identification Number PP 978542, acknowledged on September 16, 2016 by Silvestre H. Bello III, then chief of the GRP negotiating panel, under the GRP-NDFP Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG).

Arbitrario was arrested in February 2016, but was later released in August in the same year to participate in several rounds of peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP in 2016-2017. He was arrested in February 2017 when then President Rodrigo Duterte unilaterally terminated the peace talks, but released again in March 2017 to participate in the fourth round of talks in The Netherlands.

In addition to the violation of JASIG, the killing of Arbitrario constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law (IHL) as he was a prisoner of war, and thus hors de combat, at the time of his killing. It was also reported that the military refused to tender his remains to his relatives who traveled from Davao, southern Philippines, to Cagayan in northern Philippines, to give him a decent burial. This was another violation of IHL.

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. visited a tactical command post in Penablanca and congratulated the military, showing the non-compliance and disrespect by the AFP in regard to the Philippine government’s signature to the rules of armed conflict enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols, as well as the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

This incident is another affirmation of the verdict of the International People’s Tribunal 2024, which found the US government, and the Marcos and Duterte regimes, guilty of war crimes. The treatment of Arbitrario raises further questions on the treatment of the two NPA members who were killed, and ICHRP is deeply concerned other violations may have occurred.

The fact that the AFP killed the peace consultant while he was conducting consultations with farmers, exposing the Philippine government’s militarist response to the armed conflict and its refusal to address its roots. While peasant farmers continue to face hunger and landlessness, the Philippine government not only shuns opportunities to study genuine solutions to their problems, but kills those who do, like Arbitrario. As October is Peasant Month in the Philippines, ICHRP recognizes the people’s demand for genuine land reform as a crucial step towards a just peace, and expresses our solidarity with peasants and peasant advocates who remain the primary victims of state terror in the Philippines.

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