The Revolutionary Lumad Organizations of Mindanao renders the highest Red salute to Ka Rosa Kian, Ka Roxanne—a daughter of the Dulangan Manobo people, a national minority dispossessed of ancestral land and denied the right to self-determination, and a Red fighter of the New People’s Army—who was martyred in a defensive engagement together with her unit against forces of the 603rd Infantry Brigade in Barangay Laconon, Tboli, South Cotabato on April 9, 2026.
As organizations rooted among Lumad communities and part of the broad united front under the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, we honor Ka Roxanne not only as a Red fighter, but as a daughter of the Lumad people who rose in collective resistance.
In the face of sustained military operations aimed at encirclement and annihilation, Ka Roxanne stood her ground and fought as part of a collective forged in years of struggle among Lumad and peasant communities. She fell in the course of defending the people and advancing the revolutionary cause she upheld until the end.
Ka Roxanne’s life was shaped by the intertwined forces of class exploitation and national oppression imposed by a semi-colonial and semi-feudal state serving imperialist and comprador interests. The Lumad are not merely poor peasants. They are a distinct people dispossessed of land, denied self-determination, and subjected to militarization to secure corporate plunder.
She emerged from the concrete struggle of the Dulangan Manobo in the Daguma mountain range—a struggle against land grabbing, militarization, and the violent intrusion of mining, logging, and energy corporations into ancestral land.
For decades, Daguma has been a site of systematic dispossession. Since 2022, coal mining operations in Barangay Ned, Lake Sebu—by Daguma Agro Minerals Inc. and Bonanza Energy Resources Inc., linked to San Miguel Energy Corporation—have seized more than 17,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land, including ancestral territories of the Dulangan Manobo and T’boli.
Residents have been forced to sell land at prices as low as ₱80,000-₱100,000 per hectare under coercion, as areas are declared “danger zones” by authorities aligned with mining interests. Daily transport of coal from Daguma to ports and power plants exposes the integration of Lumad land into a chain of extraction serving imperialist and comprador profit.
Fertile land has been turned into zones of dust, smoke, and ruin. Rivers such as Kabulnan and Allah face contamination, while landslides, sinkholes, and floods intensify in the wake of mining operations.
This is the Lumad question in its concrete form: a people dispossessed of ancestral land and denied the right to determine their future by a state that exists to serve foreign and local ruling interests.
This plunder is enforced through militarization. The reactionary state—armed instrument of imperialist and comprador rule—deploys AFP units, paramilitary forces, forced surrender campaigns, and counterinsurgency operations to crush Lumad resistance and secure territory for corporate exploitation.
The Lake Sebu massacre of December 3, 2017, where Dulangan Manobo and T’boli leaders including Datu Victor Danyan were killed, stands as a clear act of state terror against a people defending their land.
The enforced disappearance of Dulangan Manobo activist John Calaba—last seen in a DMCI-linked area and believed to have been taken by company guards in coordination with state forces—further exposes the direct collusion between corporations and the military.
The killing of Lumad youth continues. On June 8, 2024, 16-year-old Dulangan Manobo student Kuni Cuba was shot dead by soldiers of the 7th Infantry Battalion in Sitio Kiluding, Barangay Kiadsam, Sultan Kudarat. He was on his way home when troops opened fire and later branded him and his companions as members of the New People’s Army.
Kuni Cuba was a scholar and an incoming Grade 10 student. His companions survived by fleeing, exposing the military’s false claims. His family and community rejected the accusations. His killing exposes the impunity of state forces and the systematic targeting of Lumad youth.
This is not a war against armed combatants alone. It is a war against the Lumad people—their communities, their children, and their future.
Across Daguma and surrounding areas, Lumad communities endure encirclement, harassment, arrests, and deception through state programs that undermine genuine free, prior, and informed consent.
Under these conditions, armed struggle emerges as necessity.
Ka Roxanne chose this path. She joined the New People’s Army and took part in advancing agrarian revolution, consolidating mass bases, and defending Lumad communities under relentless enemy offensives.
In Daguma and nearby areas, revolutionary forces and Lumad communities have resisted and disrupted mining, logging, and military operations through coordinated mass action and armed struggle, asserting their collective right to land, survival, and self-determination.
Through struggle, Lumad, Moro, and peasant communities forged unity against shared exploitation and national oppression.
As a Lumad woman, Ka Roxanne confronted both national and patriarchal oppression. She stood among those transforming these conditions through armed and collective struggle. She was not apart from the masses, but one of them.
The AFP and its corporate backers will vilify Ka Roxanne and her comrades while continuing their war to secure imperialist and comprador interests. Their propaganda cannot conceal the truth: it is the state that wages terror against the people.
To the ruling system, the death of a Lumad Red fighter is expendable. To the Lumad masses, Ka Roxanne is a daughter who gave her life for ancestral land and collective rights.
Her martyrdom is a great loss. But it is a temporary loss.
The same conditions that produced Ka Roxanne will produce countless more Lumad fighters who will rise from among the masses and take their place in the advancing people’s war.
We call on all Lumad communities and oppressed peoples of Mindanao:
Defend ancestral lands against mining, logging, and land grabbing.
Resist militarization and all forms of state repression.
Strengthen Lumad-Moro-peasant unity.
Advance the struggle for self-determination and national liberation.
In the face of repression and loss, we raise the call that echoes across the land:
Paragas ki to pakigbisog!
Onward with the struggle!
Pulang saludo kang Ka Roxanne!
Mabuhay ang Lumad na nakikibaka!
Mabuhay ang Bagong Hukbong Bayan!
Isulong ang rebolusyong Pilipino!