ADVERTISEMENT
Cordillera People's Alliance and Bolinget’s family fear for his safety, noting that he can be subjected to a “tokhang-style execution” if he gets arrested and transported to Davao Del Norte for his case.
“Complainants have been targeted for their critical and independent reporting on issues affecting the marginalized and oppressed sectors. They are being persecuted for publishing progressive and alternative views on matters affecting the Filipino people — progressive ideas that are anathema to the current tyrannical regime.”
“How many more people need to suffer the fate of the dozens of individuals killed – red-tagged as terrorists and then end up dead? Health frontliners like them who rendered invaluable service and sacrifice especially during the pandemic were not only exposed to a deadly virus but to a dangerous political environment."
Dr. Sancelan, Guihulngan's city health officer and head of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), was included in the hitlist circulated by anti-communist vigilante group Kagubak last year.
"Her abduction, on Human Rights Day no less, is another proof of the dangers of the administration’s vile practice of red-tagging."
Teddy Casiño of Bayan said the Duterte administration is the "number one human rights violator."
"The complainants bring the instant action in order to finally address a continuing wrong, to vindicate their basic rights, and to remind public officials that illegal, improper, unjust and oppressive acts and utterances, especially those vicious and virulent, are not without consequence. We also just want to do our work as lawyers,” the complaint read.
The red-taggers’ mantra “If you are not with us, you are against us” is so skewed and illogical. The media’s role is to serve as a watchdog of wrongdoings especially by those in power.
The complaint said the red-tagging of Cristina Palabay, Karapatan and its members and officers by the respondents violates the principle of distinction under international and domestic humanitarian law.
For the Makabayan bloc and other progressive organizations, the recently concluded Senate hearing on red-tagging will be used by state security forces as a justification to declare them as terrorists under the Anti-Terror Law.
Advocacy group Pilgrims for Peace declared that the state’s penchant for red and terror-tagging “not only further exacerbates the human rights crisis in the Philippines, but it worrisomely undermines peace efforts.”
President Duterte’s people need to get their act together and stop this game of putting innocent people’s lives and security at stake.
It seems that time is up for reckoning on the crude, arrogant and irresponsible red-tagging campaign, waged mainly by the military and police at the behest of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Confict or NTF-ELCAC. Created and nominally...
As the nation reels from the destruction of the typhoon and continued socio-economic impacts of the pandemic, Karapatan said that the hearing is not only ill-timed but “a foreboding of the things to come when the Anti-Terrorism Act is fully implemented.”
The hypocrites in government malign the work of organizers, humanitarian workers, and human rights defenders, vilifying and tagging them as enemies of the state and terrorists. They persecute many who truly work for the betterment of our society.
Men took up actor Angel Locsin’s red lipstick challenge in protest of Armed Forces of the Philippines Southern Luzon Command chief Lt. General Antonio Parlade Jr.’s latest red-tagging spree against government critics.
With the release of implementing rules and regulations, experts and concerned citizens see the potential of the law of being abused and used against those who simply want to express their opinion on issues affecting the country.
Netizens used the hastags #YesToRedLipstick and #NoToRedTagging to call out Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade's red-tagging of advocates.
“He poses himself as an advocate of free speech, and welcomes dissent, when in reality he is the number one violator of democratic rights in Southern Tagalog.”
Just days before and after the murder of Alvarez, several members of Karapatan are receiving death threats, warning that they are next if they do not stop human rights work.
A community of readers and supporters that help us sustain our operations through microdonations for as low as $1.