MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine National Police (PNP) should be ready with its “lame excuses” when it appears before a House inquiry into its profiling of individuals, organizations, and candidates allegedly linked to the communist movement, two solons from the House Makabayan bloc said.
READ: Hands off our teachers, ACT tells PNP
“The solons are readying a House Resolution into the illegal profiling of the PNP,” ACT Teachers Reps. Antonio Tinio and France Castro said in a statement on Saturday.
READ: House Makabayan bloc to PNP: Stop profiling, red-baiting or face raps
“The PNP had better get its lame excuses ready for our congressional probe,” they added.
Tinio and Castro issued the statement as they slammed the PNP’s profiling of its members as a “symptom of tyranny” and “not about counterinsurgency.”
“President Duterte and the PNP are peddling lies that the profiling of ACT and our teachers is about counterinsurgency,” Tinio said.
“This is obviously a fraud and lousy excuse because our teachers are public servants of the highest order—They are not insurgents, terrorists, or any malicious label that the PNP is giving them in its lame effort to justify its unjustifiable spying,” he added.
“This spying is nothing else but about tyranny and dictatorship,” Castro said.
“It is a manifestation of the President’s intolerance of any form of criticism and dissent against his anti-people policies, like his reneging on his campaign promise of substantial salary increases and his highly regressive TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion),” she added.
The two solons also noted that the PNP’s profiling also subjected teachers to abuse of power by police officials.
“Walang kwenta ang assurance ng PNP na wala raw dapat ikatakot kung walang ginagawang masama,” they said.
“Our teachers do have reason to fear, as such operations of the police have preceded the targeting of thousands of individuals, then extrajudicial killings under the PNP’s tokhang and anti-tambay programs,” they added.
Castro said that profiling, police visits and “prying” into the membership of a legitimate organization “are intended to intimidate and scare teachers and their organizations, to silence them and suppress the exercise of their basic rights like privacy, freedom of speech, right to organization, and right to assembly.”
“Kung totoo mang may ginagawang iligal o kriminal ang isang tao, dapat silang idaan ng PNP sa due process at hindi sa ganitong tokhang-style na modus operandi,” she said.
“Hindi mga kriminal at walang nilalabag sa bata ang ACT at mga guro natin kaya hindi sila dapat tiktikan,” she added. /muf