OMBUDSMAN Samuel Martires yesterday said a complaint for red-tagging filed against former anti-insurgency task force officials Lorraine Badoy, Antonio Parlade Jr. and Hermogenes Esperon has been dismissed because there is no law prohibiting the labeling of individuals or groups as communists or communist sympathizers.
“Sa dami ng kaso na ‘yon, hindi ko alam kung ano ‘yung status (I don’t know all the status because of the many cases filed) but if the honorable congressman is referring to those cases against Parlade, Badoy, Esperon with respect to the red-tagging, those cases were already dismissed sa kadahilanan po na wala naman pong batas na nagbabawal sa red-tagging (because there’s no law prohibiting red-tagging),” Martires told the House budget hearing on the Office of the Ombudsman’s proposed P4.98 billion budget for 2024 on the questioning of Rep. Raoul Manuel (PL, Kabataan).
Martires said the Ombudsman also could not file graft cases because it would be a stretch to do so but Manuel said that despite the absence of a law, the Ombudsman should be proactive in protecting “individuals pursuing their advocacy in accordance with our laws.”
Manuel, a militant youth representative. said activists “should not be discriminated, subjected to red tagging and harmed.”
“May mga namatay na po dahil sa (People have died because of) red tagging. The damage has been done. The government should not tolerate this,” said the lawmaker, a member of the Makabayan bloc.
Martires vowed to update the committee on the status of at least six cases involving the three former government officials, who were all members of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC).
The National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) filed the complaint in 2020 against Esperon, a former national security adviser, Parlade Jr., a retired commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Southern Luzon Command and Badoy, a former NTF-ELCAC spokesperson and former Presidential Communications Operations Office undersecretary.
The complaint stemmed from the statements allegedly made by the three officials linking the NUPL to communist organizations.
