THE National Task Force to End Local Armed Conflict yesterday cautioned incoming ML party list Rep. Leila De Lima against passing legislation to criminalize red-tagging.
In a statement, NTF-ELCAC executive director Ernesto Torres Jr. urged De Lima and other lawmakers to prioritize laws that would protect the people from recruitment into insurgency.
Earlier reports quoted De Lima, a former senator and a former justice secretary, as vowing to pass legislation to criminalize red-tagging in the 20th Congress.
De Lima said red-tagging is a “threat to truth.”
“It is a fact that terror recruitment and grooming in our country is carried out through so-called ‘legal democratic organizations’ that operate in the open while serving the underground armed insurgency of the CPP-NPA-NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front),” said Torres.
“These are the very fronts that capitalize on the ‘red-tagging’ narrative to evade scrutiny and accountability,” said Torres.
Torres said that as authorities continue to confront the “evolving threats posed by the CPP-NPA-NPA, “we respectfully caution the good Congresswoman to be wary that her good intentions to protect civil liberties do not end up shielding the networks responsible for the radicalization, grooming, and exploitation of children, students, women, and indigenous communities.
“We thus urge Rep. De Lima and our legislators to prioritize laws that protect the Filipino people from recruitment into violent extremism, rather than inadvertently legalizing a cover for its machinery,” said Torres.
He said NTF-ELCAC is looking forward to engagements with Congress to criminalize organized recruitment, ideological grooming and psychological manipulation of minors, students, women, and members of vulnerable sectors into insurgency.
Torre noted students who joined the NPA ended up getting killed in encounters.
“We cannot allow more lives to follow that same tragic arc,” said Torres.
Torres said the NTF-ELCAC is hoping Congress will also pass laws that will institutionalize “peace education and civic resilience in schools” while protecting schools from infiltration by NPA recruiters.
“Sen. de Lima’s concern about red-tagging, if not tempered by evidence-based guardrails, risks turning into a smokescreen that benefits the architects of terrorism. Legislation must protect legitimate dissent, yes, but it must also prevent the systematic destruction of lives through ideological grooming,” said Torres.
“We are ready to work with all lawmakers to craft laws that advance human rights without becoming blind to the rights of the victims of terrorism. Let us protect truth, not illusion. Let us protect the people, not their groomers and recruiters,” added Torres.
