by Hannah Samilin
Youth organizations and students gather for a protest action highlighting relevant issues affecting the masses.
Kabataan Partylist (KPL) Cordillera, along with other organizations, criticized the Police Regional Office-Cordillera (PRO-COR) for their denial of red-tagging cases in the Cordillera Administrative Regions (CAR).
Christian Dave Ruz, Regional Coordinator of KPL Cordillera, voiced his outrage as the PRO-COR openly dismissed the existence of red-tagging in CAR in their press release posted on their Facebook page last February 22.
“How shameless can it be, that rather apologizing and uttering commitment to rectify, the PRO-COR chose to categorically deny the cases of red-tagging that its elements conduct? To whom are they lying?” Ruz said.
This is in response to the statement made by Police Brigadier General R’win Pagkalinawan, PRO-COR director, where he remarked that there are no Philippine National Police (PNP) policies that instruct them to carry out red-tagging activities.
“It is not a policy of the Philippine National Police to conduct alleged red-tagging activities particularly here in the Cordillera Administrative Region, in fact, even the term red-tagging did not emanate from the PNP but from the so-called left-leaning groups headed by Joma Sison,” Pagkalinawan told Sunstar Baguio on February 21.
Red-tagging became a topic of debate after the Mountain Province PNP posted pictures of student activists during a protest action warning the public against Saint Louis University (SLU) student activists and the New People’s Army (NPA) on February 17.
The picture in their Facebook post read, “Ito ay taktika lamang nga mga raliyistang komunista na and tanging hangad ay galitin, hikayating lumiban sa klase para magwelga, laban sa unibersidad at [nang] sisihin ang gobyerno, huwag magpalinlang sa 51 taong sumisira sa kabataan.”
The Democratic Alliance of Students for Integrated Governance (DASIG) SLU released an official statement two days later condemning the Mountain Province PNP’s stand against student activism and that their members did nothing wrong as they believe that they are standing up for what is right.
“The actions of our members are based on critical thinking and our need to have our voices be heard. The organization believes that a student-leader should be integrated, relevant, and decisive,” DASIG SLU said in their official statement posted on their Facebook page.
“DASIG, as an alliance of student-leaders, recognizes that students' concerns faced within the university are rooted in socio-economic issues in the country that is yet to be resolved,” they added.
There was also an earlier case of red-tagging in the town of Sagada before and during the town fiesta in late January.
The Mountain Province police gave out flyers titled, “Deceptive Recruitment of CPP-NPA Terrorists” in Sagada, claiming the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), Mountain Province Research Development, Innabuyog, Gabriela, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), Katribu, Inayan Watch, APIT TAKO Montanosa, and Bayan Muna, among other progressive people’s organizations, as communist fronts.
On February 19, Police Major Jerry Haduca of the Mountain Province Police Provincial Office apologized to the members of the organizations who were red-tagged in the flyers during a dialogue with the people’s organizations held at the Sagada Municipal Hall.
The chair of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance Wendel Bolinget accepted the apology, emphasizing that a public apology was to be expected from the Sagada Municipal Police Station (MPS) for red-tagging activists.
“The Sagada MPS must stop red-tagging and politically vilifying people’s organizations and creating confusion and fear in Sagada communities. Sagada MPS owes us a public apology,” Bolinget said.
However, Sagada police chief Captain Basilio Hopdayan denied that the flyers were an act of red-tagging and responded that the Sagada MPS is not obligated to publicly apologize to anyone.
Why red-tagging is dangerous
Red-tagging is defined in the Philippine jurisprudence as “the act of labeling, branding, naming and accusing individuals and/or organizations of being left-leaning, subversives, communists or terrorists (used as) a strategy... by State agents, particularly law enforcement agencies and the military, against those perceived to be ‘threats’ or ‘enemies of the State.’”
Members of student organizations and alliances file a petition in support of the Anti-Political Vilification Ordinance in Baguio City.
According to a Vera Files article on red-tagging, victims of red-tagging may be subjected to interception and recording of the communication, detention without charges, restricted travel and personal liberties, an examination of bank records, seizure and sequestration of assets.
On February 21, 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a 55-page petition in court that included the names of 600 people labeling them as terrorists, according to an international news organization, Reuters.
The petition included top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), peace negotiator Luis Jalandoni, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, and dozens more accused of being members or supporters of the NPA.
Human Rights Watch researcher Carlos H. Conde called the 55-page petition a safety risk to the 600 people listed and should be publicly rejected by the Duterte administration.
“The Duterte administration should publicly reject this petition and ensure the safety of those listed in it – or risk being complicit in the resulting crimes,” Conde wrote on his article on March 8, 2018.
Red-tagging also affects student activists as student-leaders struggle against the administration’s attempt to associate non-governmental organizations to the communists.
“Accusations that they are students by day and rebels by night are not only laughable [but] also ridiculous displays of red-tagging,” University of the Philippines (UP) student-leader cry out during a UP system-wide Day of Walk Out and Action against campus militarization and threats to academic freedom.
Edited by Anna Katrine Vitor
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