De Lima seeks Senate probe into task force blamed for rights violations
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Leila de Lima on Wednesday urged the Senate to conduct an inquiry into human rights violations "committed by state actors against legitimate civil society organizations and rights defenders in the country in the guise of counter-insurgency measures."
Senate Resolution 215 filed by De Lima asks the appropriate Senate committee to investigate the red-tagging and rights abuses allegedly committed by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
The task force is directly under the Office of the President and was formed through Executive Order 70, issued in December 2018. President Rodrigo Duterte serves as the chair, while National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. serves as vice chair.
“NTF-ELCAC was supposedly created to address problems of insurgency by shifting the strategy from a military to a civilian approach. However, according to reports, it has been used for political persecution, harassment and even violation of human rights,” De Lima said in a release.
The detained senator cited the mass arrest of over 50 activists between October 31 and November 1 in a “widespread crackdown on people’s organizations in Negros and Manila.”
Organizations whose offices were raided include Bayan, Bayan Muna, Kilusang Mayo Uno, Karapatan, Gabriela, the National Federation of Sugar Workers, and the Negros Island Health Integrated Program. The houses of progressive leaders in Manila and Bacolod City were also searched.
“There is an urgent need to hold accountable the government officials involved in implementing E.O. No. 70 and determine whether the same has effectively met its objectives or whether it is merely being used by state actors to justify oppressive acts against human rights defenders and dissenters,” De Lima said.
“This abuse of power by the government, in the guise of counter-insurgency measures, affects the true beneficiaries of the services of these organizations and, in effect, deprives them of invaluable humanitarian aids in the guise of counter-insurgency measures,” De Lima said.
More individuals have been the subject of red-tagging since the signing of EO 70 and creation of the NFT-ELCAC, according to human rights monitor Karapatan.
Red-tagging, as defined by Philippine jurisprudence, is “the act of labelling, branding, naming and accusing individuals and/or organizations of being left-leaning, subversives, communists or terrorists (used as) a strategy... by State agents, particularly law enforcement agencies and the military, against those perceived to be ‘threats’ or ‘enemies' of the State.”
In 2019 alone, at least a hundred national and community-based organizations and “numerous” individuals have been red-tagged, Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay told Philstar.com.
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