USING THE SPECTER of communism to scare the people into quiet submission was a tactic used by dictator Ferdinand Marcos to quell dissent and spread fear. Marcos raised the “red” scare to prop up his authoritarian rule which was suffering cracks.
Even the protest movement then was rising as the people called for fundamental change. At that time, the nation’s economy was reeling from crisis after crisis, with poverty incidence rising from 41 percent in the 1960s to 59 percent in the 1980s, and a foreign debt that increased 12 times from 1970 to 1983, all while the Marcoses and their cronies were emptying the nation’s coffers. To ensure loyalty and a strong grip on authority, the dictator gave “juicy” positions in government agencies and institutions, and assigned select military personnel to run civilian agencies.
Today, the sense of déjà vu is strong, especially among those who have lived through the harrowing and brutal Marcos years.
So what do we make of posters circulating in Iloilo City red-tagging activists and human rights lawyers? The old and ineffective “red scare” tactic is apparently being used to create a climate of fear and insecurity. And to justify strongman rule, perhaps?
But the people know better. In the past, red-tagging led to extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests, trumped-up charges and other human rights violations. The purpose of the psy-war scheme is to demonize and criminalize all forms of dissent. This is another threat to free speech and the right to organize as it tends to treat legal organizations as “communist terrorists” or criminals.
Authorities have been demonizing legal protests and mobilizations of students and workers demanding for higher budget in education, adequate salaries, end of contractualization and the junking of the TRAIN law.
Freedom-loving Filipinos, regardless of political affiliation, must stand against these attacks as these bring us closer and closer to authoritarianism. This desperate effort at equating any kind of protest with communism, working to discredit this movement for change and intimidating people must be condemned.
Activism is not a crime.
