SC justices warn vs red-tagging, hit shallow understanding of ideologies
May 11, 2021 8:52 PM PHT
Supreme Court justices on Tuesday, May 11, grilled government lawyers for the relentless red-tagging of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and lectured them on the risks of labeling, especially labeling without basis.
During Day 7 of the anti-terror law oral arguments on Tuesday, Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier asked point-blank: What is the evidence of the NTF-ELCAC that progressive groups such as Gabriela and Kabataan are legal fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New Peoples' Army (CPP-NPA)?
Javier noted that the Philippine government has already designated CPP-NPA as terrorists in December 2020. But groups being red-tagged by the NTF-ELCAC were not mentioned in any official resolution.