The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has been busy of late trying to deflect moves questioning its very existence for being and seeking an end to its red-tagging antics. The NTF-ELCAC is flailing against bills recently filed by ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. Antonio Tinio and Kabataan Partylist Rep. Renee Co at the House of Representatives that would criminalize red-tagging and repeal the Anti-Terrorism Law.
The criminalization of red-tagging should be the logical result of a Supreme Court ruling that described it as a threat to a person’s life, liberty and security. Human rights groups have gone a step further, stating that red-tagging is an insidious scheme that sets up victims for more serious human rights violations. The vast majority of red-tagging targets were eventually arrested and detained on trumped-up charges, forcibly disappeared or killed extrajudicially.
Many have also been wrongfully tagged as “terrorists.” Websites of alternative media organizations and people’s organizations have been blocked from being accessed by users due to baseless allegations by the National Security Adviser that these online sites glorify terrorists. Five years after the enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Law, at least 227 individuals have been arbitrarily designated or charged under the said draconian legislation. Twenty of them are still in prison, while three have been disappeared. Seventeen non-governmental organizations and churches have had their bank accounts frozen due to the Marcos’ administration’s application of the law on terrorism financing prevention and suppression. The law has had detrimental impacts, not only on the individuals and groups brought to court and harassed by the Anti-Terrorism Council, but more broadly on the people’s exercise of freedom of expression and freedom of association. The repeal of the terror law remains an urgent legislative step to stop the further descent into the dark pits of authoritarianism.
Growing calls to abolish the NTF-ELCAC have obviously rattled this foremost red-tagging agency. It insists that it is engaged in “truth-tagging,” and that its malicious claims are grounded on in-depth investigations by intelligence agencies.
The intelligence community, however, has peddled enough lies to raise serious doubts not only about its competence but its motives. By extension, the same can be said about an agency whose main activity of red-tagging relies heavily on the same lies.
In 2021, military intelligence operatives named a number of alumni of the University of the Philippines who had allegedly been killed after joining the New People’s Army (NPA). As it turned out, not one of those named had joined the NPA or had been killed.
More recently, the intelligence community gave the green light to police operatives to arrest and detain 81-year old Prudencio Calubid Jr. even if the latter had more than enough evidence to prove that he was just a namesake and not the National Democratic Front consultant Prudencio Calubid named in numerous arrest warrants. The prospect of cashing in on the NDF consultant’s PhP7.8-million bounty must have been more than ample motivation.
The fact is that the NTF-ELCAC has relied on lies, half-lies, hearsay, unverified rumors and even sheer prejudice or maybe even pure dislike in red-tagging even the most unlikely individuals such as show business personalities like Catriona Gray and Liza Soberano, Baguio City mayor and former CIDG chief Benjamin Magalong and Comelec chair George Garcia.
An agency that routinely deals in untruths will never have the moral ascendancy to browbeat progressive legislators for filing bills to criminalize red-tagging or repeal the terror law, or hurl thinly veiled threats against congressmen who may be amenable to such bills.
The NTF-ELCAC must be abolished now and its red-tagging mania denounced for what it is—a crime—and its perpetrators—criminals deserving of punishment. #
