Human rights and progressive groups in Negros have denounced the plan of the 303rd Infantry Brigade (IBde) to establish an “intelligence network” in northern Negros, warning it would endanger farmers, farmworkers, and community organizers.

The Human Rights Advocates Negros (HRAN) in a statement release August 22 said the measure “will definitely result to increase of human rights abuses for farmers and farmworkers and attacks against democratic people’s organizations.”

HRAN warned that the scheme may intensify “redtagging and terror tagging and other forms of vilifications, intensified surveillance, threats and intimidations, illegal searches that may result to trumped up charges and arrest and for the worst extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearance.”

The group compared the planned network to “the dreaded ‘Alsa Masa’ that became the tool of mass murder in Negros during the late part of the 80s,” saying it may function as “death squads that target local leaders of activist organization.”

HRAN recalled that Negros Island “experienced the worst human rights abuses during the Duterte administration with documented more than a hundred cases of extra judicial killings and arrest of more than 150,” including the murders of human rights lawyers Benjamin Ramos Jr. and Anthony Trinidad, rights defender Zara Alvarez, and Councilor Bernardino Patigas Sr.

The group said abuses “did not lessen but heightened up” under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., pointing to killings of civilians “reported as ‘casualties’ in fake encounters or killings of hors de combat.”

It added that before Brig. Gen. Ted Dumosmog’s announcement, Army units in Negros had already set up Integrated Territorial Defense Systems and deployed Mobile Community Support and Sustainment Program teams in targeted barangays.

“These so called ‘intelligence network’ will only become armed goons of big landlords and agri corporations to protect landgrabbing, reconcentrations of lands and ‘development aggression’ projects such as mining, export crops, renewable energy project such as hydroelectric and solar power,” HRAN said.

The group urged communities to form human rights associations to document and condemn abuses, warning that “our silence only [perpetuates] abuses and exonerates the perpetrators.”

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) – Negros also criticized the plan in a press statement released August 22, calling it “state terrorism dressed up as ‘community protection.’”

Bayan said Dumosmog’s proposal “is openly laying the groundwork for intensified surveillance, harassment, and militarization of rural communities.”

The group questioned the timing of the initiative, noting that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) itself had declared Negros under “Stable Internal Peace and Security” (SIPS) status last year.

“The AFP’s duplicity is laughable,” Bayan said. “If all guerrilla fronts are supposedly crushed, why the sudden scramble for an intel network? Are they ghost hunting for rebels they already declared dead?”

Bayan argued that the Marcos administration’s National Action Plan on Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD) was “nothing more than a repackaged scheme to deepen the power of NTF-ELCAC.”

The group added that the so-called “whole-of-nation approach” is patterned on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and “ensures the protection of haciendas, mining operations, and foreign agribusiness in Negros while criminalizing dissent.”

“Genuine peace will not come from intelligence networks or counterinsurgency campaigns,” Bayan said. “What is urgently needed is the resumption of peace talks between the GRP and the NDFP to address the roots of armed struggle: genuine land reform, national industrialization, and sovereignty.”

Bayan called on the people of northern Negros “to remain vigilant against this crackdown and urge local officials to resist being used as pawns in a U.S.-directed dirty war.”

Brig. Gen. Ted Dumosmog, commander of the 303rd IBde, earlier told local media that the network would be established in coordination with local government units “to monitor insurgent activity.”