Joan Lacio ‘Mark’ Encancion and Jolina ‘Chloe’ Martinez Sergio: NPA Couple Killed by Philippine Army

Executive Summary:

• A prominent couple in the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, was killed on August 22. The two are believed to have been turned in by local villagers in the area around the city of Himamaylan, Negros Occidental Province, a known NPA hub.

The Philippines’ multi-decade-long communist insurgency suffered a setback in late August when the most prominent couple of the New People’s Army (NPA), Joan Lacio “Mark” Encancion and Jolina “Chloe” Martinez Sergio, were killed by the 94th Infantry Battalion in Negros Occidental Province on August 22 (Digicast Negros, August 23). The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). According to another NPA member who surrendered to the Philippines’ soldiers, Mark was the vice commander of NPA’s Sentro De Grabidad platoon while Chloe was the platoon’s political instructor.

Both Mark and Chloe acquired their aliases during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, it appears the couple took a year-long break from the insurgency, either to avoid the disease or assist NPA members who contracted it. COVID-19 had spread rapidly through the NPA’s ranks and affected the group’s highest-ranking members and allies. One of the leading commanders of the CPP, Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlow, for example, tested positive for COVID-19 after his death in a battle with Philippine security forces in 2021 (RAPPLER, November 3, 2021; see Militant Leadership Monitor, March 3, 2022).

After their hiatus, both Mark and Chloe returned to the insurgency in 2021 and operated for the next three years until their demise in August. Despite their commitment to the NPA’s communist cause and their relatively rapid rise in the NPA ranks, Mark and Chloe did not have perfect records within the group. Mark, for example, was once caught sleeping while on guard duty by a high-level commander (Digital News Exchange, August 27). This did not lead to Mark’s demotion, and as such he retained responsibility for NPA recruitment efforts.

For her part, Chloe was recruited by the CPP as a youth community organizer, likely identified as a potential recruit due to her leftist political inclinations. Chloe was made responsible for ensuring that CPP policies were being implemented in the villages under the NPA’s control. These primarily rural communities extended all the way from Mindanao in the south to Luzon in the north (South China Morning Post, February 23).

According to Roy Moreno, an individual who defected from the NPA, Chloe had been sexually abused by an individual in the NPA known as Ka Andres as far back as 2007, when she was 19 years old. The NPA, for its part, alleges that Moreno was an army intelligence asset (Philippine Revolution Web Central, April 17, 2020). Ka Andres is known alongside a man named Ka Jose for being the first same-sex couple married by the NPA (and likely the Philippines writ large, as the country does not recognize same-sex unions). Andres and Jose were wed in a CPP ceremony in 2005, where they exchanged bullets instead of wedding rings. The former was known to be an “old gay,” with several known boyfriends in the past (Philippine Daily Inquirer, February 8, 2005). While his background and the fact that he was married at the time do not necessarily preclude what Roy Moreno has suggested, the situation is highly unclear. Whatever transpired, the NPA appears to have taken the accusation against Ka Andres seriously enough to reassign him to a different unit. Even this, however, would suggest that something else might be at play, as NPA guidelines state that Andres should have received the death penalty if the organization determined he had sexually abused Chloe (Digital News Exchange, August 27).

Ultimately, it appears it was Mark and Chloe’s lack of discipline that led Filipino soldiers to locate them with the support of the local population in the city of Himamaylan, Negros Occidental Province. The area has been a known hub for NPA activity since at least 2020 (DailyGuardian [The Philippines], May 27, 2020). The Philippine Army claims that residents turned the couple in to security forces on patrol after they attempted to extort local villagers (Philippine News Agency, August 23; balita.com, August 24). These reports suggest that regardless of the NPA’s claims to protect poor villagers, the group may be more exploitative than its propaganda and ideology suggest.