Drilon bill to outlaw ‘Red-tagging’ filed, cheered

A Senate bill has been filed to make “Red-tagging” a criminal offense, pushing back against recent efforts and pronouncements of the police and the military accusing certain people of being members or supporters of the communist insurgency and terrorist organizations, often with little or no proof.

The measure makes the act punishable by up to 10 years in prison and aims to stem “the increasing institutionalization and normalization of human rights violations,” according to its author, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon.

The phrase “Red-tagging” has come into use under the Duterte administration to describe how state forces have accused some activists, journalists, academics, lawyers, judges, labor leaders or even celebrities of being members or supporters of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army.

Drilon’s Senate Bill No. 2121—“Act Defining and Penalizing Red-Tagging”—would “fix the legal gaps, address impunity [and] institutionalize a system of accountability,” the lawmaker said in the explanatory note.

The opposition senator filed the bill on Thursday, the same day the Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning the spate of killings and other acts of violence directed at judges, prosecutors and lawyers, many of whom were shot dead by unidentified assailants after they were branded as sympathizers of left-leaning organizations.

Unprecedented escalation

Drilon noted how the past few years had seen an “unprecedented, rapid escalation of Red-tagging or the state’s malicious labeling and stereotyping of individuals or groups as communists or terrorists.”

Such acts by government forces, he said, have “threatened the very life, liberty and security of the vilified men and women” and have “resulted in serious human rights violations, such as harassments, arbitrary arrests, detentions and enforced disappearances.”

“In some instances, being Red-tagged is a prelude to death,” said the senator, who had also taken issue with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, a body created by President Duterte to help end the decades long insurgency.

Drilon particularly questioned the designation of an active military official, Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., for a civilian role as the body’s spokesperson. As the face and mouthpiece of the task force, Parlade has recently drawn criticism for engaging in Red-tagging himself.

The bill defines Red-tagging—or red-baiting—as the act of “labeling, vilifying, branding, naming, accusing, harassing, persecuting, stereotyping, or caricaturing individuals, groups, or organizations as state enemies, left-leaning, subversives, communists, or terrorists.”

Such activities, the bill says, may be carried out as part of a “counterinsurgency or antiterrorism strategy or program, by any state actor, such as law enforcement agent, paramilitary, or military personnel.”

Hate speech deterrent

Aside from imprisonment, the person found guilty of the offense will also be perpetually barred from holding public office, it said.Human rights groups on Thursday welcomed the Drilon bill.

Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), who was among those earlier red-baited by Parlade, said his group hoped a counterpart measure would soon be filed in the House of Representatives.

Olalia noted that the legal citations and rationales of the Senate bill were similar to those contained in the memorandum NUPL submitted to Sen. Panfilo Lacson when he presided over a Senate inquiry into the Red-tagging controversy in December last year.

“Once passed into law, [the bill] will most probably deter the unscrupulous hate speech by state forces against its own citizens and also make more effective … the legal remedies against these dangerous vilification of practically everybody the ‘wayward elements’ victimize,” Olalia said. —WITH A Report from Krixia Subingsubing