ABRA DE ILOG, PHILIPPINES — Eight days into the new year, in the stifling aftermath of a state-sanctioned attack on the Philippine village of Abra de Ilog, the country’s armed forces shared a video of Filipina American Chantal Anicoche to its Facebook page. Filmed by the military’s 203rd Infantry Brigade in the province of Mindoro Occidental, the video shows Anicoche clambering out of a vine-covered pit, barefoot, sallow and drawn.
Cowering, Anicoche is led to a clearing. She sits on the ground as a soldier asks, “Why are you here?”
A passionate activist from Maryland, 24-year-old Anicoche had moved to Abra de Ilog the month prior to learn from the Indigenous Mangyan-Iraya and peasant communities that are resisting extractive industries, militarization and state violence. On New Year’s morning, the armed forces claimed to engage in several clashes against the New People’s Army (NPA), a Maoist insurgency group classified by the government as terrorists. The ground invasion was followed by aerial bombing and strafing.
After the maelstrom, Anicoche was reported missing.
In the video, which marked the first time she had been seen publicly in a week, Anicoche speaks quietly, glancing at the soldiers surrounding her, and recounts a confusing story about why she is there. Her staccato words are seemingly insufficient, and the soldier filming presses her again.
“We’re trying to help you,” he says. “So you better tell us the truth.”
As friends, fellow activists and advocacy groups have reiterated, neither the video nor the military’s narrative add up. According to that narrative, Anicoche had been without food or water for more than a week when the military found her (and yet, she was miraculously upright and walking). Allegedly, she sustained no injuries except for a few insect bites (and yet, she required hospitalization at an army camp). Allegedly, she voluntarily stayed at that camp for 22 days (and yet, she never once spoke for herself despite constant press releases and social media posts).
“It looks very staged,” said Jom Dolor, deputy secretary general of Migrante USA, a progressive alliance of U.S. Filipino migrant workers, noting there are points “riddled with holes that really cast doubt on the military’s narrative.”
On the Negros19
In the time since I reported, wrote, and then waited for this piece to be published (print has a long lead time), the Philippine Armed Forces massacred 19 people in Toboso, Negros. Almost immediately, the Philippine Government began a disinformation campaign by branding those killed as armed members of the New People’s Army, the militant branch of the country’s Communist Party, who were killed during counter-insurgency operations. Of course, western mainstream media parroted this claim.
While some of those killed are confirmed NPA, nine of the victims, including two minors, were civilians — journalists, researchers, students, and human rights defenders — documenting the struggle of Negros’ peasant communities against extractive industries and industrial agriculture. Among those killed were U.S. citizens and Phil-Am activists Lyle Prijoles and Kai Dana-Rene Sorem.
Less than a month later, forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun released her preliminary findings following autopsies on five of those slain. While the bodies were already in an advanced state of decomposition, she detailed issues with the mishandling of evidence at the crime scene, including the removal of the individual’s clothes, and the misidentification of remains, including researcher Errol Wendel, whose family were given the body of another person. Fortun also reported that several of the victims were shot from behind, while others sustained bullet wounds that would not have been the cause of death, suggesting that some were left to bleed to death.
These findings, even as the investigation and a fact-finding mission remain ongoing, suggest that the Philippine Armed Forces have committed war crimes in violation of International Humanitarian Law. And this isn’t the first time. As Fortun noted, there is an ongoing lack of transparency from state security forces and a failure to use scientific methods to help establish exactly what happened — and who is to be held accountable.
Meanwhile, security assistance and military support from Australia, the United States, and New Zealand continues to unconditionally support a military that has committed documented human rights abuses and war crimes. Sound familiar?
“This is impunity,” Fortun said in a press conference. “This has been happening again and again in our country.”
While I’m working on a related story, I wanted to share this update as much of my work centers on how state-violence overlaps with environmental and human rights abuses yet across much of the world, governments and militaries act with near constant impunity. The more we speak and learn about atrocities committed by taxpayer-funded institutions and elected officials, the closer we can inch to any actual accountability.
Illustration via Anakbayan Chicago.
In Remembrance of Lyle Prijoles
San-Francisco Phil-Am activist, Lyle Prijoles was among those killed by the Philippine Armed Forces in Toboso, Negros. Brandon Lee, whose own struggle against state-violence was documented in my 2024 investigation, was Prijoles longtime friend and comrade. With his permission, here is a portion of Lee and Melissa Reyes’ tribute to Prijoles.
Lyle helped build movements. He was central to political education, organizational strategy, and major campaigns like the Philippine Human Rights Act, or the PHRA, which sought to end U.S. military aid to human rights violators in the Philippines. He helped plan and execute conferences, assemblies, and campaigns that strengthened international solidarity. He did not simply participate, he helped guide even more young people joining the ranks of the National Democratic Movement.
And yet, despite all this, what many of us return to most is his humanity. Lyle was easy to love. He was funny, soft-spoken, sharp, profoundly dependable. Godfather. Brother. Friend. He loved deeply and lived beyond himself.
So who is Lyle Prijoles?
Not the caricature painted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines or the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. Not the distorted figure used to justify violence. We reject those narratives entirely.
Lyle was a community servant, cultural worker, journalist, artist, and revolutionary shaped by love for the people. He was someone who spent his life asking difficult questions, sharpening contradictions, and choosing solidarity over self-interest.
His death has left us shattered. The grief is immense, and so is the rage—particularly as we confront the violence of his killing and the machinery that attempts to erase its truth. But no propaganda can undo what those who loved him know.
We know who Lyle was.
He was ours: our friend, our brother, our comrade. One of the best of us, and now a son of Negros.
And though we are devastated, we refuse the enemy’s version of his life.
We will remember Lyle as he lived: nerdy but agit, hilarious and brilliant, imperfect and principled, deeply compassionate, and wholly committed to collective liberation.
Thank you for reading this issue of Defender.
Rage On. ❤️🔥
