Defend Mindoro and Stop the Military Attacks on the People! Release Chantal Now!

ILPS-US condemns the US-Marcos regime's fascist attack on the people of Mindoro. On New Years Day, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) deployed attack helicopters and began strafing the indigenous Mangyan-Iraya community. They conducted 12 aerial bombings, and over 1200 soldiers flooded barangay (village) Cabacao, forcing nearly 200 families to flee. Three Mangyan-Iraya children were killed, and student Jerlyn Rose Doydora died fleeing the scene, their body taken by the AFP in an attempt to hide their brutality. Amidst this attack, Filipino youth leader, Chantal Anicoche, from Baltimore went missing and was recently confirmed to be in custody of the AFP. Chantal, a beloved member of her community, had been conducting relief work among rural communities impacted by environmental disaster and poverty. Desperate to control the narrative and cover up their war crimes, the AFP intimidated and threatened the community to prevent humanitarian workers and fact finding missions from assessing the damage and searching for Chantal Anicoche.

US-backed military terror is not new to the Mangyan-Iraya. Youth and farmers have been victims of extrajudicial killings, and threats from military and armed agents of real estate and natural resource companies working in tandem to intimidate the community from resisting escalating landgrabbing and plunder of ancestral land for foreign profits. The attacks on Mindoro are part of a wider counterinsurgency plan of the Philippine government, using both brutal military violence and psychological warfare to maintain power of big compradors and landlords, against the movement of the Filipino people seeking liberation. Throwing aside international humanitarian law, the Philippine government treats civilians as combatants, carrying out extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture, and terrorizing communities. The Mangyan-Iraya families and Chantal are part of millions impacted by fascist violence, and urgently need international solidarity to expose and oppose the crimes committed against them.

The US imperialists are not only responsible for the growth of fascism in the Philippines, but are actively increasing the capability of their puppet AFP troops to wage all out terror on the people to crush the people's movement, and use the country as a launchpad for its imperialist war with the US' biggest competitor - China. The US Senate authorized $2.5 billion in military funding to the Philippine government in late 2025, aiming to bolster the AFP's capacity to execute the strategic aims of the US. The US' tactic of creating and backing fascist regimes abroad like the Marcos Jr regime and use of all-out military terror is part of its strategy to maintain hegemony, and is only escalating out of desperation as the crisis it has created intensifies - as seen by its recent attacks on Venezuela to seize the world's largest oil reserves.

Decades of a vibrant revolutionary movement in the Philippines is living proof that US-backed war crimes and military terror can never stop the will of the Filipino people to resist and change the rotten system, and in fact will only add fuel to the fire of the people's outrage. It is inevitable that the Filipino people will ultimately liberate themselves from US imperialism and their own fascist corrupt government, and the support of peoples movements around the world who stand in solidarity is ever so important.

ILPS-US calls on its members and allies to take to the streets on this global day of action, and uplifts the demands of the Filipino people to end de facto martial law in Mindoro, justice for the Mangyan-Iraya communities, and the safe release of youth leader Chantal Anicoche!

Defend Mindoro! Stop the bombings!

End US-backed human rights violations in the Philippines!

Stop US military aid to the Philippines!

Release Chantal Anicoche!