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Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
May 5, 2026 | 1:40pm
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society Inc. has flagged attempts to posthumously red-tag its founder, Leonard Co — one of the country's foremost botanists, shot dead by soldiers in 2010 — after the military operation in Toboso, Negros Occidental.
The red-tagging of Co began circulating online in the weeks after the Army killed 19 people in Toboso on April 19. The military says this operation was a legitimate clash with New People's Army (NPA) rebels, but rights groups and victim families say killed civilians who were not combatants.
The conservation group that Co founded said in a statement Monday, May 4, that he had never before been accused of being a rebel until now.
"For nearly sixteen years, not once was Leonard called a terrorist — not by media, not by government, not by the military itself," it said.
"That accusation surfaces only now, following the Toboso killings, to avoid accountability," it added.
'Proximity to danger not a crime'
The Army has maintained that all 19 killed in Toboso were combatants, including two students from the University of the Philippines who were in the area for non-school-related research.
As the Army faces pressure to account for who died in Toboso, military officials, in turn, have been asking whether those in the area had coordinated with local government units before conducting activities there.
However, the conservation society warned that casting suspicion on civilians in conflict areas risks repeating the kind of narratives that surrounded Co’s killing over a decade ago.
"Proximity to danger is not a crime, nor should it be an automatic death sentence. It is not grounds to be shot, and it is certainly not grounds to be posthumously relabeled to make your death easier to ignore," the group said.
On Nov. 15, 2010, Co, forest guard Sofronio Cortez, and farmer Julius Borromeo were shot and killed by soldiers of the Philippine Army's 19th Infantry Battalion in Kananga, Leyte. The three were sheltering under umbrellas near a tree Co had been tapped to study for a government reforestation project, when hundreds of rounds struck them.
The Army called the incident a crossfire with NPA rebels.
The Philippine National Police, the Commission on Human Rights, and the Department of Justice all rejected that account, each concluding that Co and his companions were the actual targets. Charges were filed against nine soldiers. Fifteen years later, no one has been convicted.
PNPCSI said the facts of Co's death have never been in serious dispute until now.
"Contrary to what is being said about him online, Leonard was not a terrorist," the group said.
Co was the Philippines' foremost authority on ethnobotany and taxonomy, the group said. He discovered eight new species and had three endemic species named in his honor: Mycaranthes leonardi, Nepenthes leonardoi, and Rafflesia leonardi.
"He was in the mountains because that was where his work was — away from the comforts of home and the company of his loved ones, for nothing more than his dedication to his research," the group said.
The Commission on Human Rights launched an independent investigation on the Toboso encounter on April 26 and said that in cases of doubt, people involved shall be presumed civilians.
For PNPCSI, the LGU coordination argument being raised against the Toboso dead is in the same vein as the accusations against Co, specifically the suggestion that an undeclared presence in a conflict area is grounds for suspicion, if not culpability.
"If someone with Leonard's prestige and accomplishments can simply be red-tagged for doing reforestation work," the group said, "no Filipino is safe."
