Torture survivors Raymond and Reynaldo Manalo have filed their appeal before a Malolos court that earlier acquitted retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan and several members of the military auxiliary force earlier this month.
“Though factually baseless and clearly malicious, I cannot merely dismiss Respondent Duterte’s red-tagging and accompanying grave threats as either figurative, joking, or otherwise benign considering that many victims of extrajudicial killings, illegal arrest and detentions, excommunicado confinements, forced disappearances and other analogous attacks were called or labeled ‘communists,’ members or supporters of the NPA, “terrorists,” and like labels before they were attacked.”