MANILA, Philippines — The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) has vowed to continue its fight against vilification and attacks on its members and all members of the legal community.
The group issued the statement on Sunday after learning of an article reporting a member of the NUPL in Palawan supposedly getting cleared of his alleged link to the New People’s Army (NPA).
The group cited an article from the Palawan News dated December 2019 where a certain “Kenneth Tabla,” also known as Keneth Pratt was reportedly included in a list released by the Palawan End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (ELCAC) with alleged links to the NPA.
He was listed as the “NUPL provincial coordinator,” the group said.
While a certain Keneth Pratt is found to be a law student member of NUPL, the group said that it does not have any existing chapter nor any law student organization in Palawan.
There is also no NUPL “provincial coordinator” appointed or assigned in the said province.
“Upon diligent verification, it appears that a certain Keneth Pratt is indeed a law student member of NUPL. But the NUPL would like to make it clear nonetheless that it neither has any existing chapter nor any law student organization in the province of Palawan, much less has there been an NUPL “provincial coordinator” ever been appointed or authorized in Palawan,” it said in a statement.
“This incident reveals again how the government’s national and local TF-ELCACs maliciously bend facts and engage in innuendos to taint and wreck the reputation and person of individuals and groups they have been red-tagging,” NUPL added.
The group said it strongly condemns the misrepresentations and half-truths spread by the government’s TF-ELCACs.
“The NUPL vows to continue its fight against the vilification and attacks against its members and all members of the legal community in particular and against all other victims of this reckless gambit in general which is at war with due process and the so-called “rule of law,” it added.
The “arbitrary red-tagging” poses a clear and present danger for those who are challenging the Anti-Terrorism law, NUPL said.
Tied up with General Parlade’s (Major General Antonio Parlade Jr.) endless reckless diatribes and Usec Badoy’s (Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy) limitless wild rants, these arbitrary red-tagging gone berserk poses a clear and present danger for those who are challenging the Anti-Terrorism Act in the forum we have chosen: the trenches and foxholes in the battles against State overreach, fully armed with the law, evidence, reason, principles and the truth,” it said.