MANILA — A youth activist who survived aerial bombings in Mindoro has surfaced to denounce what she described as state-sponsored lies after the government’s anti-insurgency task force tagged her a victim of so-called “terror grooming.” The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict frequently claims that youth are “fooled” into becoming activists, which it often equates with “terrorism”. On January 30, Stephanie Borinaga, a member of the national secretariat of Anakbayan, released a video statement rejecting claims by the NTF-ELCAC that she had been manipulated into joining armed rebels. A day after, the video was deleted on Facebook. Borinaga issued the statement days after the task force named her in a press briefing, She said the accusation placed her life in danger. “Contrary to the lies of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the NTF-ELCAC, I am not missing and I did not join the New People’s Army,” Borinaga said in Filipino. “I am releasing this statement because my life is under threat.” Borinaga said her work in Mindoro was a conscious decision, not one one she was coerced into. She had immersed with Mangyan Indigenous communities and peasant farmers following interactions during the October 2025 Peasant Month commemoration, where she first heard accounts of displacement, land grabbing, and militarization in Abra de Ilog. “They spoke about how large corporations, backed by the military, are taking over their land,” she said. “They also told me how failed flood-control projects have repeatedly devastated their communities.” At least 1,200 soldiers from the AFP’s 203rd Infantry Brigade, 76th Infantry Battalion, and 1st Infantry Battalion flooded barangay Cabacao in Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro and shelled its foothills, January 1, ostensibly to conduct an “intelligence-driven defensive operation” against the revolutionary New People’s Army.

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/24325