No just and lasting peace in NTF-ELCAC’s amnesty scheme
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS STATEMENT
21 March 2026
Reference: Cristina Palabay, KARAPATAN secretary general, 09173162831
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk, 09189790580
No just and lasting peace in NTF-ELCAC’s amnesty scheme
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has made much of the number of amnesty applicants (more than 16,000 as of the March 14, 2026 deadline, according to the National Amnesty Commission), calling it a “quiet but decisive victory for peace.”
What the NTF-ELCAC fails to acknowledge, however, is that none of the seven amnesty proclamations for the CPP-NPA-NDFP since the 1970s has actually resulted in the resolution of the armed conflict and just and lasting peace.
None of these amnesty proclamations involved seriously addressing the deep-seated economic, social and political roots of the armed conflict. None of them involved genuine land reform and dismantling the rigid social hierarchies perpetuating poverty and inequality in the countryside. None of them involved laying the foundations of national industry to ensure quality employment for the steadily rising labor force and wean away the country from being import-dependent and export-oriented. And none of them sought to end the dominance of dynasties and warlords in reactionary politics.
With the roots of the armed conflict left untouched, social injustice festers and gives rise to resistance.
The NTF-ELCAC’s amnesty scheme is nothing but window-dressing by a regime that thinks genuine peace can be achieved through a series of proclamations and PR maneuvers, as it continues its rampage of extrajudicial killings, bombings, enforced disappearances, torture, illegal and arbitrary arrests, red-tagging and other grave violations on human rights and international humanitarian law.
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KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign. It was established in 1995.