KARAPATAN welcomes the recently publicized findings and recommendations of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) nationwide public inquiry conducted on red-tagging, which affirmed the widespread, harmful and dangerous consequences of red-tagging on people’s lives, liberty and security, especially those exercising their right to dissent, to expression, assembly and association.
Although the inquiry report falls short of actually stating that red-tagging is state policy, its call for an unequivocal assertion by government against red-tagging is a bold one as it goes directly against the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), a state agency expressly created to conduct and orchestrate red-tagging at every level of government. The findings and recommendations during the inquiry bolsters the call for justice for the victims and the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC.
KARAPATAN also welcomes the CHR’s recommendations to the Supreme Court to conduct reviews of the protective writs of amparo and habeas data because these have been ineffective in according protection to victims and their families. More important, the CHR also called for serious reviews of the country’s anti-terrorism laws for their role in exacerbating human rights violations and shrinking the civic space. The Anti-Terrorism Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act are twin evils used by the current administration to persecute human rights and humanitarian workers.
The CHR’s recommendations are crucial at this point in the country’s history when the state has, through its latest counter-insurgency program, the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD), further strengthened both the NTF-ELCAC and other Duterte-era fascist policies like Executive Order 70 and Memorandum Order No. 32 which calls for heightened militarization in the countryside, especially in Negros, Samar and Bicol. We urge the CHR to sift through the language used in the policy papers and pronouncements on EO 70 and NAP-UPD, which actually serve as blueprints for red-tagging and other violations on human rights and international humanitarian law.
These findings put the CHR on a collision course with the dominant fascist state policy and renders it vulnerable to red-tagging, the very scourge it is seeking to purge.
With this, KARAPATAN renews is call for a stop to all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. It further demands accountability from those in government who have used mechanisms like the Confidential and Intelligence Funds, and added monies to the budgets of the NTF-ELCAC and the military fascist machinery to trample on the people’s rights.