EDITORIAL — A prelude to red-tagging?

Teachers belonging to the group Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) are concerned, and not because of the usual issues involving teachers but because they think they are being profiled.

This after the Department of Education’s operations office issued a memorandum, directing all regional and division offices to submit a list of ACT-affiliated public school teachers who are part of the agency’s Automatic Payroll Deduction System.

Now the group thinks this is in preparation for them to be individually red-tagged.

The Education secretary is Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio, who also just happens to be head of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. And Vice President Carpio has already previously red-tagged ACT after the group expressed its support for the week-long transport strike last March.

While we haven’t seen the hand of Vice President Carpio in this move, she is Education secretary, nothing there happens without her say-so.

To be fair NTF-ELCAC hasn’t issued a peep in this regard, they have not even been brought into this issue, but we just can’t dismiss the fact that Carpio also heads this task force.

And we all know the task force’s reputation when it comes to red-tagging. The NTF-ELCAC has already proven its incompetence in determining the real threats to our democracy, what with its red-tagging of whoever it finds disagreeable, whoever speaks up against a government policy, anyone merely expressing their opinion, or even just someone doing their job.

This has included government officials, judges, actors, and even private individuals just going about their own business.

Until now the problem with NTF-ELCAC is that it cannot tell between an activist and a terrorist. For the task force they are the same; never mind that activists only want to spur action to improve some government functions or to call attention to sectors less served or represented, while terrorists are out to sow terror for whatever reason they see fit.

Because of their involvement with the youth and their various issues and also because they belong to another sector that is overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated, teachers are more than willing to speak up on different issues, which often rubs people, especially those in power, the wrong way.

This makes teachers, especially vocal ones, prime targets for red-tagging.

But then again, perhaps ACT members are just seeing too much in this memo. We hope this is the case.