Toboso’s dead deserve more than parallel narratives

The encounter in Barangay Salamanca on April 19 has produced two casualty lists, four investigations, and a flood of social media content that reads less like reporting and more like recruitment. What it has not produced — 12 days in — is a clear, independently verified account of how 19 people died.

Start with what is not in dispute. The Armed Forces of the Philippines says all 19 were New People’s Army members or supporters. The Communist Party of the Philippines admits 10 of its fighters were killed, including Northern Negros Front commander Roger Fabillar — a man who carried a PHP 1 million bounty and was wanted in connection with at least 36 summary executions of suspected military informants since 2025. That part of the AFP account holds.

The other nine names are the problem. A 30-year-old community journalist. A UP Diliman student councilor. Two agrarian reform advocates. Two Filipino-Americans. A 15-year-old girl from Salamanca itself. A 17-year-old boy from Calatrava. The military says they were combatants. Their colleagues, families, and universities say they were not. Barangay officials swore in an affidavit that no group filed coordination papers for any research or immersion in the area. The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers says the scene was sanitized before independent investigators could reach it.

This is the part where, in the past, Negros has been left to its own devices. Oplan Sauron in 2018 and 2019. The Sagay 9 massacre in October 2018. Karapatan counted at least 41 killings in the Negros provinces between November 2018 and July 2019; other groups put the cumulative figure at 87. Senate committees recommended that the police and the military investigate themselves. Almost no one was prosecuted. The AFP called those operations successful too.

What is different this time is the noise around the dead. Both sides accuse the other of disinformation while running parallel content operations of their own. Military-run Kalinaw News, NTF-ELCAC’s official posts, solidarity hashtags, and offshore advocacy pages are pumping framings into Filipino feeds faster than any newsroom can fact-check. The PHP 8.08 billion NTF-ELCAC budget proposed for 2026 — a 314 percent jump from 2025 — is funding part of that messaging machine. Whatever the truth of Toboso turns out to be, that machine will shape how most Filipinos remember it.

Four probes are now underway or proposed: Rep. Javier Miguel Benitez’s House Resolution 968, the Commission on Human Rights probe, the AFP’s internal review, and likely U.S. consular interest in the deaths of Lyle Prijoles and Kai Sorem. Without coordination, they will produce four versions of the same week. The CHR needs unimpeded access to the scene. The House inquiry needs to subpoena the 79th Infantry Battalion’s operational records and intelligence sourcing. Independent autopsies and ballistics, conducted by experts with no stake in either narrative, are not optional.

The dead in Toboso deserve a single answer. Negros has been promised that before.