On the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.—a stark historic reminder of the deadly toll of political persecution and state violence—political prisoners’ support group KAPATID called for the total defunding and abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
KAPATID warned that recent press releases by the NTF-ELCAC regarding its meeting with the Philippine representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) appear aimed at sanitizing its notorious human rights record and justifying a bigger budget, particularly when UN experts themselves have called for the NTF-ELCAC’s immediate abolition over red-tagging and related human rights violations.
“The practice of labeling political opponents as subversives is a classic state weapon of repression,” KAPATID noted. “Forty-three years ago today, Senator Ninoy Aquino was assassinated after years of being systematically red-tagged by the Marcos dictatorship, falsely charged and jailed for subversion and alleged ties to the New People’s Army (NPA), and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. Today, the state mechanism has changed its name to the NTF-ELCAC but the objective remains identical: to criminalize dissent, justify political imprisonment, and neutralize critics.”
KAPATID stressed that routine engagement with the OHCHR does not constitute an endorsement nor can the NTF-ELCAC trade on the credibility of a UN human rights body to legitimize itself and justify an expanded budget.
KAPATID also criticized the NTF-ELCAC’s introduction of the term “spy-tagging” (referring to allegations of labeling civilians as government informants), warning that this new coinage only seeks to distract from the documented, severe consequences of red-tagging—intimidation, criminalization, political imprisonment, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings of citizens exercising their fundamental rights to speak, organize, and dissent.
KAPATID further emphasized that the NTF-ELCAC cannot place the NPA and the state on the same plane when citing alleged human rights violations. While the NPA is an armed party to a conflict subject to international humanitarian law, it does not hold state power or control public resources. As a state mechanism, the NTF-ELCAC must be held strictly accountable for how it exercises government authority. The existence of an insurgency can never justify treating activists, journalists, or community organizers as combatants.
KAPATID echoed the calls of UN Special Rapporteurs—including Irene Khan (Freedom of Opinion and Expression) in 2024 and Ian Fry (Human Rights and Climate Change) in 2023—who both recommended the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC.
Under the proposed ₱7.2-trillion 2027 national budget submitted to Congress, ₱9.74 billion is earmarked for the NTF-ELCAC—a ₱1.66-billion increase over its ₱8.08-billion allocation for 2026. KAPATID urged lawmakers to reject this increase and completely defund and dismantle the NTF-ELCAC, asserting that public money must not be used for a task force that enables and institutionalizes red-tagging and its lethal consequences, eroding fundamental rights and the core tenets of a constitutional democracy.#
Archival Photo: Sen. Ninoy Aquino being escorted off the plane by military men moments before his assassination, August 21, 1983.
