MANILA — On the seventh year of Executive Order No. 18, Tanggol Magsasaka reiterated its demand for the urgent abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), citing alleged human rights violations and militarized operations targeting peasants and rural communities.

The group said the task force, created under the Duterte administration, has systematically branded critics, activists, and advocates as “communists/terrorists,” undermining human rights and restricting civic space. It also accused the task force of emboldening rights violations through what it described as “red-tagging” and terror-labelling.

Tanggol Magsasaka criticized the Marcos Jr. administration for boosting the task force through the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD), which it said targets youth, students, religious groups, and government employees for surveillance and legal persecution.

According to the group, in the past three years under Marcos Jr., there have been 129 extrajudicial killings, 96 of which involved peasants, seven disappearances of peasants, 164 illegal arrests, 48,000 displaced persons, and 11 million individuals harassed by state forces.

The organization also questioned the task force’s development programs, such as the Barangay Development Program (BDP) and local problem-solving sessions, saying the military-led entity lacks the expertise to implement meaningful development and has historically used only 32% of its allotted budget.

Tanggol Magsasaka argued that NTF-ELCAC’s militarized approach fails to address the root socioeconomic causes of armed insurgency and only exacerbates social unrest. “The task force has proved itself to be an obstacle. It has been nothing but an instrument of repression, militarism, and terror,” the group said.

The organization called for the reallocation of NTF-ELCAC’s budget to social services and development programs, emphasizing that its abolition is necessary to pave the way for a just and lasting peace.