Terrorism in the Philippines

Also known as: Terrorist attacks in the Philippines · Philippine terrorism · Terrorism in PH · Terrorist violence in the Philippines

Society

Definition

Terrorism in the Philippines is the documented record of terrorist violence and state counterterrorism in the Philippine archipelago — a record that, in the standard survey accounts, is carried by two distinct conflicts under one label: the jihadist violence of the southern Philippines, associated with the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Rajah Solaiman Movement, and the local network of the Islamic State; and the decades-long communist rebellion, whose fighting forces — the CPP–NPA — have operated nationwide at lower intensity and have been designated terrorist organizations by third states and by the Philippine government itself. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines, Wikipedia — New People’s Army)

The scale of the record is stated by its keepers, not by this entry: Human Rights Watch counted nearly 400 civilians killed and more than 1,500 injured in attacks from 2000 to 2007 — a toll it ranked above Indonesia, Morocco, Spain, Turkey, or Britain for the period — while survey datasets record more than forty major bombings by Islamist groups since January 2000, concentrated in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, and place the Philippines twenty-third on the Global Terrorism Index. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines) The state’s answer runs from the Human Security Act of 2007 to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (Republic Act No. 11479), which created the Anti-Terrorism Council and its designation regime — the framework this wiki’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 entry documents in full. (LawPhil — RA 11479)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	Terrorism in the Philippines	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_Philippines
Wikidata	terrorism in the Philippines (Q3544770)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3544770
DBpedia	Terrorism_in_the_Philippines	https://dbpedia.org/page/Terrorism_in_the_Philippines
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	terrorism	https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/terrorism
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Terrorism (sh85134112)	https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85134112
MeSH	Terrorism (D023481)	https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D023481
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	terrorism Philippines Abu Sayyaf Jemaah Islamiyah Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters Islamic State East Asia Province Rizal Day bombings SuperFerry 14 Marawi 2017 Anti-Terrorism Act 2020 ATC designation proscription CPP NPA	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

Terrorist attacks in the Philippines
Philippine terrorism
Terrorism in PH
Terrorist violence in the Philippines

Examples and Analogies

Two conflicts, one label: Philippine terrorism is a single legal and statistical category covering two different wars — a southern jihadist insurgency whose bombing record defines the public image of terrorism, and a nationwide communist rebellion whose terrorist designation is itself contested in court; the category holds both, but every claim about it must say which conflict it measures. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines, Wikipedia — New People’s Army)
The bombing record as a timeline: the major attacks read as a chronology of the southern conflict — the Rizal Day bombings of December 30, 2000 (22 killed in coordinated explosions across Metro Manila, attributed to the Abu Sayyaf Group with Jemaah Islamiyah), the SuperFerry 14 bombing of February 26, 2004 (116 dead by the commonly cited count, the work of an Abu Sayyaf bomber), the Davao night-market bombing of September 2, 2016 (15 killed, Maute-linked suspects convicted in 2020), and the Jolo Cathedral bombing of January 27, 2019 (killing worshippers at a Sunday mass). (Wikipedia — Rizal Day bombings, Wikipedia — SuperFerry 14, Wikipedia — Davao bombing, Wikipedia — Jolo Cathedral)
Designations as the state’s labeling instrument: the terrorist label arrives by different instruments on different dates — the United States foreign terrorist organization designation of the CPP–NPA in August 2002, the European Union listing in 2005, the Philippine Proclamation No. 374 of December 5, 2017, and the Anti-Terrorism Council resolution of December 9, 2020 — a stack of listings that works like an indictment file: powerful in effect, and in each instance open to challenge, as the courts have shown. (Wikipedia — FTO list, Wikipedia — New People’s Army)
Verified data (documented incidents and instruments):
Rizal Day bombings: December 30, 2000 — five coordinated explosions in Metro Manila, among them a bomb on an LRT train; 22 killed, more than 100 injured; attributed to the Abu Sayyaf Group in cooperation with Jemaah Islamiyah, with the Indonesian operative Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi credited with planning (Wikipedia — Rizal Day bombings)
SuperFerry 14: bombed February 26, 2004 off Corregidor; 116 dead by the count most often cited, with figures varying in the sources; initially treated as an accident, declared a bombing by the government on October 11, 2004; claimed by the Abu Sayyaf Group (Wikipedia — SuperFerry 14)
Davao night-market bombing: September 2, 2016, Roxas Street, Davao City; 15 killed (the toll reaching fifteen on September 13) and about 70 injured; suspects linked to the Maute group, eleven of them convicted by a Taguig court on September 29, 2020; followed by Proclamation No. 55 of September 2016 declaring a state of national emergency on account of lawless violence (Wikipedia — Davao bombing)
Jolo Cathedral bombing: January 27, 2019, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral, Jolo, Sulu — treated in this wiki’s Abu Sayyaf entry (Wikipedia — Jolo Cathedral)
Marawi: seized May 23, 2017 by the alliance of Isnilon Hapilon and the Maute group; the five-month siege that followed is this wiki’s Siege of Marawi entry, with Proclamation No. 216 of May 23, 2017 placing Mindanao under martial law (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 216)
Human Security Act of 2007: the first dedicated statute, under which a Basilan court designated the Abu Sayyaf Group on September 10, 2015; repealed by the 2020 act (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines, LawPhil — RA 11479)

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Jihadist Bombing Record

Researchers use the documented incidents — Rizal Day 2000, SuperFerry 2004, Davao 2016, Jolo 2019 — as the fixed points of the southern bombing record, each with its own attribution and each carried in this wiki’s Abu Sayyaf, Islamic State, and Siege of Marawi entries rather than duplicated here. (Wikipedia — Rizal Day bombings, Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi)

2. Analyzing Counterterrorism Law and Institutions

The statutory sequence — Human Security Act 2007, Anti-Terrorism Act 2020, the Anti-Terrorism Council’s designation practice, and the constitutional litigation over the 2020 act — supplies the Philippine case study in the trade-off between security powers and civil liberties, treated in this wiki’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 entry. (LawPhil — RA 11479, Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)

3. Researching Terrorist Designations

The CPP–NPA designation record — the 2002 United States listing, the 2005 European Union listing, the 2017 proclamation, the 2020 council designation, and the September 2022 Manila court ruling that declined to proscribe the organizations on the ground that the acts alleged constitute rebellion — makes the Philippines the standing case study of designation and its judicial limits. (Wikipedia — FTO list, Wikipedia — New People’s Army)

4. Risk Assessment and Security Studies

Analysts grounding travel or investment risk assessments in the Philippine record work from the attributed datasets — the Global Terrorism Database incident counts and the Global Terrorism Index ranking — treating each figure as its compiler’s claim about a heterogeneous record. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)

Strategies

Attribute every casualty figure: counts in this record vary by source and by date of counting — SuperFerry 14’s toll, the siege tallies, the dataset totals — so the neutral form is always “X dead by the count of Y.” (Wikipedia — SuperFerry 14, Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)
Separate the conflict literatures: jihadist violence and the communist rebellion have different geographies, targets, and legal histories; conflating them produces both analytical error and inflated casualty claims. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines, Wikipedia — New People’s Army)
Carry designations with their dates and authors: a listing is a documented act of a specific authority on a specific date — not a fact about the organization’s nature — and the record includes both the listings and their judicial counterpoints. (Wikipedia — New People’s Army)
Use the statutory milestones as the legal spine: 2007, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022 — each year’s instrument changes what the state may do, and every operational account should be read against the framework in force at the time. (LawPhil — RA 11479)

Security and Safety Measures

Public-transport vigilance: the documented record — LRT car 2000, ferry 2004, night market 2016, cathedral 2019 — is a catalog of soft targets, the basis of the standing Philippine security posture in transit hubs, markets, and places of worship; no operational detail is required or given here. (Wikipedia — Rizal Day bombings, Wikipedia — Davao bombing)
Emergency-powers calibration: the state’s lawful toolkit — Proclamation No. 55’s state of national emergency (2016) and Proclamation No. 216’s Mindanao martial law (2017–2019) — illustrates the constitutional gradations between ordinary policing, emergency rule, and martial law. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 216)
Designation compliance: entities in the financial sector operate freezes under the Anti-Terrorism Council’s designations and the terrorism-financing law, a compliance regime with real legal consequences for covered institutions. (LawPhil — RA 11479)
For journalists and researchers: report designations and allegations with attribution, and avoid repeating unverified operational claims — the convention of this corpus and of the reputable Philippine press. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)

Historical Context

The modern record is usually dated from the turn of the twenty-first century. The Rizal Day bombings of December 30, 2000 announced the Manila reach of the southern groups, and the campaign that followed — the SuperFerry 14 bombing of 2004, the hotel and market bombings of the decade, the entrance of Jemaah Islamiyah operatives into the southern camps — drew the post-9/11 designations: the United States, which had listed the Abu Sayyaf Group as a foreign terrorist organization on October 8, 1997, added the CPP–NPA on August 9, 2002 — a listing expressly sought by the Philippine government — and the European Union followed with its own CPP–NPA listing in 2005. (Wikipedia — Rizal Day bombings, Wikipedia — FTO list, Wikipedia — New People’s Army) The Philippine statute book answered with the Human Security Act of 2007 — under which the Abu Sayyaf Group became the first organization designated by a court, on September 10, 2015 — and with the counterterror campaigns that attrited the Abu Sayyaf leadership across the 2010s. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)

The record’s hinge is 2017. The seizure of Marawi on May 23, 2017 by the Islamic State-aligned alliance of Isnilon Hapilon and the Maute group provoked Proclamation No. 216 — martial law across Mindanao — and the five-month siege that ended with the city destroyed and the alliance’s leadership dead; the violence had been preceded by the Davao night-market bombing of September 2016, for which eleven Maute-linked suspects were convicted in 2020. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 216, Wikipedia — Davao bombing) The legislative sequel came in 2020: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, signed July 3, 2020, replaced the 2007 statute, created the Anti-Terrorism Council, and sustained constitutional scrutiny — upheld by the Supreme Court in December 2021 in almost all respects, with finality in 2022, the year a Manila regional trial court dismissed the proscription case against the CPP and NPA as describing rebellion rather than terrorism. The council’s designations — the CPP–NPA in December 2020, the NDFP in June 2021, later individuals and groups — remain the operative current status of the record. (LawPhil — RA 11479, Wikipedia — New People’s Army)

Challenges and Controversies

The CPP–NPA Designation Question

Whether a five-decade insurgency is terrorism or rebellion is the record’s oldest definitional dispute: the United States (2002), the European Union (2005), Proclamation No. 374 (2017), and the Anti-Terrorism Council (2020) say the former; the movement says the latter; and the courts have spoken on both sides of the line — the European Union’s Court of First Instance ordered Jose Maria Sison’s personal delisting in 2009, and the Manila regional trial court declined proscription of the organizations in September 2022, holding the acts alleged to be rebellion. (Wikipedia — New People’s Army, Wikipedia — Sison)

Counterterrorism Powers and Civil Liberties

The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 drew the most petitions of any statute in Philippine history, and the Supreme Court’s December 2021 decision — constitutional in almost all respects, with two provisions voided — settled the framework while leaving the criticized powers (warrantless detention periods, designation without judicial finding) in force; the litigation and its consequences are this wiki’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 entry’s subject. (LawPhil — RA 11479, Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)

The Marawi Record

The siege’s aftermath — a displaced population counted in the hundreds of thousands by the government’s own figures and a city whose reconstruction ran for years — fixed the criticism that the counterterror victory was bought at a civilian cost that outlasted the battle; the matter is documented in this wiki’s Siege of Marawi entry. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi)

Counting Terrorism

The datasets that rank the Philippines — Global Terrorism Database incident counts, the Global Terrorism Index’s twenty-third place, Human Rights Watch’s 2000–2007 toll — differ in definitions and coverage, and the honest summary is that the record’s scale is known only within the tolerance of its measurers. (Wikipedia — Terrorism in the Philippines)