Baguio court stops cops from Red-tagging student activists

SOLO PROTEST Baguio City has been the center of activism in north Luzon since the 1970s with its huge number of universities. New generations of activists kept up the fight for social justice even in small numbers when the coronavirus pandemic struck. —VINCENT CABREZA

BAGUIO CITY—A Baguio court has prohibited the Cordillera police from posting social media commentary or putting up tarpaulins that portray four University of the Philippines Baguio students and graduates as communists and terrorists.

Judge Emmanuel Cacho Rasing of the Baguio Regional Trial Court Branch 3 issued a writ of amparo on Wednesday against the regional police accused to be behind the widely circulated internet posts and signs that reportedly Red-tagged the petitioners, Christian Dave Ruz, Deanna Louisse Montenegro, Leandro Enrico Ponce and Keidy Transfiguracion.

This writ is an order of protection (“amparo” is Spanish and Portuguese for “refuge”) that the Supreme Court describes as “a remedy available to any person whose right to life, liberty and security is violated or threatened” by the actions of a government official or a government office.

No admission

In a three-page order, Rasing said all Cordillera police units and their personnel “shall make no social media tarpaulin postings or public postings by any other means branding or tagging the petitioners and [their] organizations … as communist-terrorists, [Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA)] front organizations, NPA recruiters and other similar content.”

Rasing issued the order while also noting that the Cordillera police did not necessarily admit responsibility for such social media posts and public signs. The hearing on the allegations raised against the police was set on March 28.

In their March 22 petition, Ruz, Montenegro, Ponce and Transfiguracion sought the writ of amparo because of an allegedly “aggressive and systematic effort to condition the public” that they are enemies of the state “who deserve to be summarily eliminated.”

Ponce chairs the University of the Philippines (UP) Baguio Student Council while Montenegro, currently the Cordillera spokesperson for the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), is taking a graduate course in UP Baguio. NUSP is an organization of student councils.

Transfiguracion, the coordinator of the Cordillera Youth Center, and Ruz, Cordillera coordinator of the Kabataan Partylist Group, are UP Baguio graduates.

Dialogue

In January last year, Ruz participated in a dialogue with the Army at the time when the Department of the Interior and Local Government pressed the city council to pass a resolution that would make the CPP-NPA, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and their alleged front organizations persona non grata (unwelcome) in the summer capital. The council excluded legitimate activist organizations from the resolution.

The petitioners said they filed police blotter reports about occasions when they were Red-tagged and publicly harassed when their photos were featured in anticommunist tarpaulins.

They had also written the Commission on Human Rights and Mayor Benjamin Magalong about their predicament. One of the posts targeting Montenegro was sexually offensive.

Their counsels Francesca Macliing Claver and Lauro Gacayan also asked the court to issue an injunction “forever enjoining them [the Cordillera police] from conducting any false publicity which Red-tags the petitioners through the use of social media and other forms of information.”

Bishop’s petition

On March 8, retired Bishop Reuel Norman Marigza of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines also turned to a local court to stop an anticommunist policy that would have employed “Oplan Tokhang” on Cordillera militants, government employees and media men suspected of being communist sympathizers.

His petition was dismissed on March 10, days before the Tokhang policy issued by a regional intelligence-sharing committee was rejected by the Cordillera Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC).

In a March 18 interview, Magalong, who chairs the RPOC, said the policy was returned to the Regional Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee which would instead adopt indigenous Cordilleran practices to persuade Left-leaning members of highland communities to denounce the NPA. —WITH A REPORT FROM KIMBERLIE QUITASOL