Urgent Alert on the Disappearance of Chantal Anicoche
January 8, 2026
Human rights organization Karapatan reported that Chantal Anicoche – a US Filipino community leader who went missing after New Years’ Day bombings by state military in Mindoro – is alive and now in custody of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
We join Chantal’s friends and family and colleagues in calling for her immediate release and safe return to home. Her rights must be upheld at all times, and she should be released immediately. We demand that Chantal must not be subject to any form of torture, interrogation, threat, harassment, and intimidation from the hands of any unit of the AFP.
Chantal’s initial disappearance came after the January 1st AFP bombing and strafing of a community in Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro. Performed in the guise of a military operation against the New People’s Army, the bombings killed 5 civilians – three Mangyan-Iraya indigenous children and two youth, including Jerlyn Rose Doydora, a researcher from a university in Manila. The bombs also destroyed crops, farmland, and reportedly killed two cows and three carabaos, severely affecting the livelihood of the Mangyan indigenous people. According to local government data, 769 individuals were forcibly displaced and evacuated in a local high school.
The bombings in Mindoro constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law and amounts towar crimes. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), and its Commander and Chief, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, are responsible and must be held accountable for these egregious crimes. While the AFP may try and pose as having “found” Chantal, they are the very ones guilty of the war crimes that have caused the grave crisis in Mindoro.
Chantal is a 25 year old Filipina from Maryland, where she has served as a leader with the Filipino American Student Association. Chantal has taken up the causes of Filipino migrants abroad and peasants and indigenous communities in the Philippines. In the US, Chantal served as a staunch advocate of the Philippine Human Rights Act, a proposed US bill which calls for the suspension of military aid to the Philippine military until human rights requirements are met and human rights perpetrators are held accountable.
Chantal’s advocacy and experience in the US inspired her to go to the Philippines to integrate with the most exploited and oppressed classes, which brought her to Mindoro, where people are resisting the entry of mining corporations and destructive renewable energy projects on the island.
ICHRP calls upon members and friends of ICHRP, and those who care for human rights, to take inspiration from Chantal Anicoche, who chose to give up personal comfort and aspirations in the United States to dedicate herself to the cause of the downtrodden. We call for urgent campaigning for her release, and an end to the military blockade in Abra de Ilog, Mindoro. Just like Chantal, we call for an international fight against foreign military aid to the AFP and the ongoing war crimes of the Marcos regime in the Philippines.
STOP THE BOMBINGS IN MINDORO!
END WAR CRIMES IN THE PHILIPPINES!
RELEASE CHANTAL ANICOCHE!
END FOREIGN MILITARY AID
TO THE MARCOS REGIME!
