BAYAN-Negros

05/03/2026

Stand with Atty. Gorgonio and All Development Workers Under Attack! Resist State Terror Under Marcos Jr.!

Bayan Negros Press Statement On the Filing of Writs of Amparo and Habeas Data for Atty. Rey Gorgonio and Negros Development Workers

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan - Negros (BAYAN Negros) expresses its full support for Atty. Rey Gorgonio of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL-Negros) and the development workers of Paghidaet sa Kauswagan Development Group (PDG) in filing petitions for the Writs of Amparo and Habeas Data before the Supreme Court of the Philippines.

The filing of these protective writs is a necessary legal step in the face of persistent death threats, surveillance, and intimidation carried out by state forces against human rights defenders and development workers in Negros.

Atty. Gorgonio has long stood beside farmers, workers, and marginalized communities in Negros Occidental, providing legal defense to those facing harassment, fabricated charges, and political persecution. That he now finds himself compelled to seek judicial protection reflects the alarming climate confronting lawyers and advocates who defend people’s rights from the rural hinterlands up to urban centers where counterinsurgency operations have extended their reach.

The death threats and attacks against PDG development workers and their legal counsel cannot be separated from the broader pattern of red-tagging, militarization, and repression directed at organizations assisting communities embroiled in land disputes and agrarian conflicts in South Negros. This is the same organization whose former legal counsel, Atty. Ben Ramos of PDG, was brutally gunned down in Kabankalan City in November 2018, a murder that remains unsolved and emblematic of the impunity surrounding attacks on human rights defenders in the region. The threats against current PDG workers form part of a campaign to dismantle grassroots organizing and silence community resistance.

These attacks on development workers are simultaneously attacks on the very communities they serve. By terrorizing lawyers and organizers who assist farmers in land disputes, indigenous peoples defending ancestral domains, and workers demanding fair wages, the state aims to leave these communities defenseless and vulnerable to displacement, exploitation, and corporate plunder. For example, the entry of HAPI Inc. in Candoni, Negros Occidental, exemplifies how military operations clear the path for corporate ventures while trampling on the rights of local communities.

These attacks are within the framework of the Marcos Jr. administration's National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD), which conflates development work with communist insurgency and justifies state terror against unarmed civilians. Under this policy, legal activists, development workers, and community organizers are systematically red-tagged, surveilled, and targeted for elimination. It treats legitimate people's organizations as military objectives rather than partners in genuine development.

We call on the judiciary to act swiftly to ensure the safety of Atty. Gorgonio and the development workers, and to affirm that defending the rights of the marginalized is not a crime.

BAYAN Negros likewise calls on the Marcos Jr. government to abolish National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and to cease all forms of harassment and intimidation against lawyers, NGO workers, and people’s organizations. Counterinsurgency has no place in suppressing legitimate dissent, whether in remote barangays or city streets. Human rights work is legitimate and protected activity. Legal advocacy for farmers and the poor must not be met with threats, surveillance, or the barrel of a gun. # #

03/03/2026

From the sugar fields of Negros to the streets of Tehran, the people must seize this moment to strike back at imperialism!

PRESS STATEMENT ON THE US-ISRAELI ATTACKS ON IRAN
March 3, 2026

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) Negros strongly condemns the US-Israel war of aggression against Iran and calls on the Filipino people, especially Negrenses, to resist this imperialist war that directly threatens our lives, livelihoods, and national sovereignty.

The illegal bombing of Iran by US-Israeli forces has already sent shockwaves through the global oil market, with Brent crude prices surging past $80 per barrel and analysts warning of potential spikes to $100 per barrel. For Negros Island, where agriculture remains the backbone of our economy and diesel powers everything from sugarcane trucks to irrigation pumps, this means catastrophe.

The Philippines imports nearly 100% of its oil, with 96% coming from West Asia, including 49% from Saudi Arabia alone . Up to 40% of these imports pass through the now-war-torn Strait of Hormuz. Every peso increase in diesel prices bleeds our farmers dry. As of March 3, diesel prices went up by P1.20 per liter, gasoline by P1.90 per liter, and kerosene by P1.50 per liter, based on separate advisories from industry players. It marked the 10th consecutive week of increases for diesel and the eighth for gasoline. With the US-Israel war escalating, food prices will soar, and the already meager incomes of sugar workers and peasant families will be further eroded.

This is a double burden: US imperialism forces neoliberal policies like oil deregulation upon us, then unleashes wars that make those policies lethal to the poor. The US controls our economy through the IMF-World Bank, then drags us into its wars of conquest.

We also denounce the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the murder of over 100 schoolchildren in US-Israeli strikes. This is regime change imperialism, identical to what the US seeks in nations that refuse to bow to its hegemony, as also shown in the illegal arrest of democratically-elected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

But we must also recognize: the same US military machine bombing Tehran operates in our backyard. The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) turns Philippine soil into a staging ground for US wars. While the National Security Council lies that these are "Philippine-controlled" facilities, the truth is US troops operate freely, stockpile weapons, and use our islands as forward bases without our consent.

While the US wages war abroad, its puppet regime wages war against the Filipino people at home. Negros Island remains one of the most militarized zones in the Philippines—a laboratory for state fascism under the Duterte-era Memorandum Order 32 and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). The "whole-of-nation" approach justifies military encampments in peasant communities, red-tagging of activists, and summary executions—all to silence resistance to exploitative sugarcane plantations and destructive mining projects .

The connection is clear: US imperialism needs a militarized Philippines to secure its economic interests and military dominance in the Asia-Pacific. The troops that train our soldiers in "counter-insurgency" are the same troops bombing Iran. The drones that surveil our farmers are the same drones striking Tehran. The weapons used to massacre activists and peasants are paid for by US military aid.

We call on all Negrenses — workers, farmers, students, professionals — to join the global resistance against US-Israeli aggression. We demand an immediate end to the US-Israel war on Iran and respect for Iranian sovereignty. We also call on the dismantling of all EDCA sites in the Philippines and termination of all unequal military agreements with the US.

These calls are also inextricably linked to our calls for the withdrawal of all AFP combat troops from Negros peasant communities and an end to the NTF-ELCAC, as they are part and parcel of the US war machine. We should also militantly struggle toward genuine land reform and national industrialization to end labor export dependence and oil import vulnerability — the triumph of which is a huge stake at imperialism’s heart!

From the sugar fields of Negros to the streets of Tehran, the people must seize this moment to strike back at imperialism.

We extend our militant solidarity to the Iranian people resisting foreign aggression. We stand with Palestinian liberation. And we vow to intensify our struggle against US militarization in Negros and throughout the Philippines.

US IMPERIALISM, GET OUT OF IRAN!
US IMPERIALISM, GET OUT OF THE PHILIPPINES!
STOP THE MILITARIZATION OF NEGROS!
LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!

29/11/2025

Activist group BAYAN Negros demanded accountability over the P4.283 billion in flood control projects implemented in Bacolod City, saying the recent widespread flooding revealed “a collapse in government planning and oversight.”

By CESAR JOLITO III Activist group BAYAN Negros demanded accountability over the P4.283 billion in flood control projects implemented in Bacolod City, saying the recent widespread flooding revealed “a collapse in government planning and oversight.” In a statement issued on Wednesday, November 26...

29/11/2025

BAYAN IN THE NEWS:

"Stop the theatrics, we want real accountability. Where did the P4 billion flood control projects in Bacolod City go?” Bayan Negros said in a statement from its spokesman Noli Rosales on Wednesday.

The Philippine Red Cross Negros Occidental–Bacolod City Chapter Emergency Response Unit rescuing residents of Purok Mars, Brgy. Singcang Airport, on Tuesday.*PRC photo Several groups and netizens o…

29/11/2025

BAYAN IN THE NEWS:

Activist group BAYAN Negros sought accountability for the officials and the City Government of Bacolod in the recent ‘catastrophic flooding’ that occurred in the city due to the inclement weather brought by Tropical Depression Verbena.

• RICHARD T. CABALLERO JR. Activist group BAYAN Negros sought accountability for the officials and the City Government of Bacolod in the recent

26/11/2025

STOP THE THEATRICS! WE WANT REAL ACCOUNTABILITY. WHERE DID THE 4 BILLION PESO FLOOD CONTROL PROJECTS IN BACOLOD CITY GO?

On the catastrophic flooding in Bacolod City and Marcos Jr’s planned visit for Oplan Kontra Baha

BAYAN NEGROS STATEMENT
November 26, 2025

BAYAN Negros strongly condemns the latest wave of catastrophic flooding in Bacolod City as Tropical Depression Verbena exposed the full-scale collapse of the government’s flood control programs. Bacolod’s own CDRRMO reports 3,571 families from 31 barangays, or 10,943 individuals displaced, while major roads turned into rivers and entire communities were forced to evacuate.

This humanitarian crisis comes despite P4.283 billion in flood-control projects poured into Bacolod City alone since 2017, with annual allocations ballooning from P118.93 million in 2017 to over P1.028 billion in 2023. All that money, yet Bacolod still sank. The numbers reveal what the people already know: the “projects” were never meant to protect us, only to enrich those in power.

And now as if to mock the survivors, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is set to arrive in Bacolod next week for the launch of Oplan Kontra Baha, a program marketed as a solution but rooted in the same deception. According to DPWH officials, Marcos will meet with Mayor Greg Gasataya and barangay captains on December 5 to champion a “major flood control initiative” supposedly capable of reducing floods by 60 percent through garbage clearing and dredging.

The narrative that floods happen simply because “garbage blocks the waterways” is a dangerous and dishonest lie—one used to blame urban poor communities while hiding the real culprit: massive, top-down corruption. You do not lose P4.283 billion to a few sacks of basura. You lose it to bureaucrat capitalism, to substandard, ghost, or deliberately flawed projects run by politicians who treat public funds as private capital. It also stems the conscious refusal of the state to build genuine climate resilience.

Marcos Jr.’s visit cannot erase the fact that he is the chief architect of the corruption that is drowning Negros. Any honest anti-corruption campaign must name him directly. His own allies’ exposés—chief among them Zaldy Co’s revelations of over P1.7 billion in Marcos-inserted funds in Negros Occidental alone—show how deeply institutionalized plunder has become under his administration.

As Marcos Jr. prepares to set foot in Negros, he must confront what the people already know: corruption killed our communities long before the floodwaters rose.

Negros is not drowning because of storms alone; we are drowning in the consequences of a government built on plunder, repression, and lies. And while Marcos and Duterte must be held fully accountable, local officials must not be spared: former congressman and now Mayor Greg Gasataya, as well as former mayor and now Congressman Albee Benitez, owe the people a full explanation of where Bacolod’s 4 billion flood control funds actually went.

The people’s anger must not be pacified by photo-ops, relief packages, or empty apologies. It must build toward a deeper demand: not merely the jailing of officials, but the dismantling of the system that breeds corruption, militarization, and disaster—and the forging of a genuine national democratic alternative. BAYAN Negros reiterates its call for the resignation of Marcos and Duterte and all other officials implicated in corruption! We also call on the urgent establishment of a People’s Transition Council to steer the country toward genuine democracy, accountability, and systemic change.

Reference:
Noli Rosales
Bayan Negros Spokesperson

15/11/2025

Bayan Negros on the Zaldy Co Exposé and Marcos Jr.’s Upcoming Visit to Typhoon-Hit Negros
Press Statement
November 15, 2025

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is set to visit Negros Occidental today, according to the provincial governor, more than a week after Typhoon Tino ravaged the province. His arrival comes at a moment of widespread anger, following Rep. Zaldy Co’s revelation that Marcos Jr. inserted over 100 billion worth of infrastructure projects into the 2025 national budget, ₱1.7 Billion of which was in Negros Occidental alone. This includes allocations for La Castellana and Isabela, two of the areas hardest hit by the storm.

The exposé confirms what the people of Negros have long observed: the Office of the President has become a center of budget manipulation, with massive public funds funneled through presidential discretion and partisan alliances. The sudden eruption of accusations from within Congress also reveals the widening fractures among the ruling elite, as Marcos and the Duterte bloc maneuver for political survival ahead of the Iglesia Ni Cristo–backed rally calling for the president’s ouster.

For BAYAN Negros Island, these revelations reaffirm a long-standing truth: corruption thrives because the political system is structured to enable it. Marcos Jr.’s theatrics, including his “Sumbong sa Pangulo” data dump of anomalous flood-control projects before, do not change the fact that he sits at the helm of bureaucrat capitalism as its chief architect, where budget insertions, ghost projects, and unchecked executive discretion form the backbone of governance. The Duterte faction’s sudden moral posturing must also be rejected as cowardly opportunism.

Public outrage must rise to a clearer understanding: corruption thrives because the political system rewards it. The problem extends far beyond individual officials or lavish lifestyles of nepo babies. The entire structure of governance—from budgeting to procurement to local implementation—is built to serve entrenched interests.

We also warn against attempts by the Duterte faction to present themselves as crusaders against corruption. Their political record speaks for itself. Their involvement in the present conflict stems from competing ambitions, not a commitment to clean governance.

Corruption in infrastructure and flood-control projects is inseparable from abuses committed under the government’s counterinsurgency program. In Negros, and other parts of the country, military units continue to receive enormous funds through programs like NTF-ELCAC and E-CLIP, even as human rights violations escalate.

This is seen in the recent case of the extrajudicial killing of peasant organizer Joe Ann Escudro during intensified military operations in Southern Negros, and the the forced surrender of Epi illacaño and Maita Flores in Brgy. Buenavista, Himamaylan City, under coercion to enroll in E-CLIP, a program that has become fodder for corruption by military men.

As Marcos Jr. lands in Negros, BAYAN Negros Island asserts the need for a full investigation into the ₱1.7 billion budget insertions identified in the Zaldy Co exposé and all related projects in Negros Occidental, as well as the abolition of corruption-heavy budget mechanisms such as the Unprogrammed Appropriations and discretionary insertions.

We also call on he immediate pullout of military troops in the countrysides who only sow terror among rural communties. Corruption is also done by these armed men, not just men in suits and contractors.

Marcos Jr.’s visit may offer images of concern and sympathy, but the people of Negros face a deeper crisis rooted in corruption, political conflict among ruling clans, and worsening repression. These will not be resolved by theatrics from those in power.

Only the organized strength of the people can confront and transform the conditions that brought us to this crisis. Never has it been more clear — or urgent — the struggle toward national democracy that breaks the cycle of bureaucrat capitalism and elite rule.

BAGONG ALYANSANG MAKABAYAN (BAYAN) – NEGROS ISLAND