Human rights group Karapatan slammed the presence of Presidential Communications and Operations Office (PCOO) Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy in the House hearing on the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Karapatan Deputy Secretary General Roneo Clamor derided Badoy’s presence in the hearing as a “audacious and ridiculous display of the PCOO and the Duterte government’s priorities.”
Human rights group Karapatan slammed the presence of Presidential Communications and Operations Office (PCOO) Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy in the House hearing on the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Karapatan Deputy Secretary General Roneo Clamor derided Badoy’s presence in the hearing as a “audacious and ridiculous display of the PCOO and the Duterte government’s priorities.”
“Amid a looming infectious disease outbreak where the PCOO is expected to disseminate necessary information and health advisories to the public, Badoy, being the rabid red-tagging sycophant that she is, instead chose to sit it out on the House committee hearing on the Anti-Terrorism Bill. Together with the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, Badoy denying her red-tagging acts to desperately defend herself in the hearing and then in next breath engaging in blatant red-tagging of progressive lawmakers and human rights organizations is not surprising. She is a delusional fascist lapdog, we expect nothing logical and coherent to come out of her foul mouth which only reiterates the Duterte regime’s rhetoric of disinformation, deception, and black propaganda on dissenters,” Clamor said.
The Karapatan official, however, averred that “Badoy’s red-tagging hysterics, which have now reached a Congressional hearing, might have been laughable if its implications on our rights to life and security are not dangerous. Red-tagging is not just a matter of calling someone a ‘communist.’ As Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. displayed in his now-deleted tweet, maliciously tagging someone as a ‘communist’ means that person should be shot down. It legitimizes State violence against people voicing out dissent against Duterte’s fascist and anti-people policies. Red-tagging has led to military violence in rural peasant and indigenous communities, in union busting, in the deaths of human rights defenders and lawyers. These are not mere labels.”
“As part of the government’s counterinsurgency campaign, people tagged as ‘communist’ are not mere ‘communists.’ They are ‘communist terrorists.’ Duterte’s lackeys in Congress may put up all the mental gymnastics to create the illusion that the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill will not target dissenters and activists, but in precisely tagging us as ‘communist terrorists,’ the Anti-Terrorism Bill will become nothing more than a tool for State repression, to quell dissent in all forms by tagging dissent as ‘terrorism,’ akin to the repealed Anti-Subversion Law,” he continued.
“Badoy’s rabid and hysterical red-tagging is the true, botched face of the Anti-Terrorism Bill. She is merely doing the job of exposing its fascist underbelly by being the embodiment of the bill’s draconian and repressive measures which will only unleash the horrors of State terrorism upon the people,” Clamor ended.