AUTHORITIES are using the old and ineffective “red scare” tactics to create a climate of fear and insecurity, portray themselves as victims of destabilization, and even justify strongman rule.
But the people know better for these schemes are not new. In the past, red-tagging led to extrajudicial killings, enforced distaff 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.
A recent memorandum of the Philippine National Police calling on station commanders to conduct surveillance and profiling of “left-leaning groups” and their leaders is drawing flak. It should. Red-tagging is usually a prelude to worse forms of attacks on human rights.
Several organizations and personalities were visited the past month by police officers. These included the office of urban poor group Kadamay, the campus residence of the University of the Philippines Student Regent, an office of an environmental group, and even hospital unions. The obvious objective of the visits was apparently the profiling of the organizations by the local police.
The police memorandum is steeped in counter-insurgency objectives and makes a target of legal mass organizations engaged in legal and unarmed struggle. 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. These are legitimate demands that the police and military have been tagging as an ouster plot against the Duterte administration.
Activism is not a crime. Freedom-loving Filipinos, regardless of political affiliation, must stand against these attacks as these bring us closer and closer to authoritarianism.
