ILOILO City – Posters have mushroomed across this city tagging as communist-terrorists several members of cause-oriented groups, activists and human rights lawyers.
A “cheap red-scare tactic” was how the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) in Panay Island described the posters.
The posters featured the photos of 47 people; the most prominent was Maria Concepcion “Concha” Araneta Bocala, a consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
Bayan-Panay staged a picket yesterday at Plazoleta Gay here to protest what they dismissed as a vilification campaign against the “progressive and democratic left.”
In a statement, the Kabataan party-list in Region 6 described as cowards those behind the posters for “hiding behind the veil of anonymity.”
At the bottom right of the posters were the words “By: Panay Alliance of Victims of CPP-NPA-NDF.”
The Kabataan party-list believed the police and military were behind the posters.
The government’s anti-insurgency campaigns in the past linked legal organizations and personalities to the communist movement in the countryside, drawing a very thin line between armed combatants and legal activists, it said.
The party-list warned of possible killings and enforced disappearances resulting from the posters.
In 2007, the group recalled, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston pointed out the responsibility of the government, military and police in the killings and disappearances of hundreds of activists and those accused of supporting communist rebels.
“We condemn these cheap acts against our leaders. No one is to be blamed but those who are paid to protect the interests of those who are in power,” according to the Kabataan party-list in a joint statement with progressive youth groups Anakbayan and League of Filipino Students.
Without the militancy of cause-oriented groups, they said “we are not able to pursue policy reforms and advance the welfare of the youth and the people…Without our campaigns, the government will continue to deny the youth and the Filipino people our constitutional guarantees and welfare.”
RED-TAGGING CRIMINALIZED IN PROPOSED BILL
In a related development, on Dec. 4 during a hearing at the House of Representatives, the Committee on Human Rights led by chairperson Cong. Cheryl Deloso-Montalla approved a bill for the recognition and protection of human rights defenders.
The measure outlines the rights of human rights defenders against red-tagging, vilification, threats, harassment, judicial harassment and other violations.
It also establishes the obligation of State actors in exercising extraordinary diligence in investigating reports of such violations, as well as the accompanying penalties on State actors who will violate the rights of human rights defenders.
The substitute bill, a harmonized version of House Bills 1617 and 8128 authored by progressive party-list congressmen Carlos Zarate, Ariel Casilao, Sarah Elago, Antonio Tinio, France Castro, Emmi de Jesus, Arlene Brosas and Edcel Lagman, was deliberated upon and passed 11 years after the first proposed bill on human rights defenders was filed by former congressman Satur Ocampo and other legislators in 2007./PN
