EDITORIAL - Calling someone red

The Supreme Court recently sided with former Bayan Muna Partylist lawmaker Siegfred Deduro when it granted him a petition of writ of amparo after authorities associated him with the communist insurgency.

According to a report in Philstar.com in a decision dated July 4, 2023 yet, the Supreme Court declared that associating red-tagging and guilt by association jeopardizes a person’s fundamental rights to life, liberty, or security. The Supreme Court set aside an earlier ruling by the Iloilo Regional Trial Court in dismissing Deduro’s petition for amparo.

A write of amparo protects individuals whose right to life, liberty, or security is violated or threatened by unlawful acts of public officials, employees or private entities.

“Petitioner should not be expected to await his own abduction, or worse, death, or even that the supposed responsible persons directly admit their role in the threats or violations to his constitutional rights, before the courts can give due course to his petition… In such cases, the consummation of the threat to petitioner's life, liberty, or security, or the commission of the abduction or killing may be the subject of proper administrative or criminal proceedings,” the decision read.

It could not have been said better.

Deduro isn’t alone. There have been many people who have been unjustly red-tagged by authorities, particularly the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). These are people from all walks of life including actors just pushing for their own advocacies, judges who made rulings some groups could not abide with, priests speaking out on certain issues, government officials merely carrying out their mandate, and even ordinary people just setting up community pantries during the pandemic lockdowns.

What made it worse was that the task force and some people in the military couldn’t really differentiate, or just really didn’t give a damn, between activists calling for certain reforms and the communist insurgents actually looking to overthrow and replace the duly-elected government.

It’s good that the court has finally recognized, or at least made it widely known, that being red-tagged can lead to losing one’s rights or worse, one’s own life.

Now further steps must be taken to make sure red-tagging ends. Of course, we are talking about abolishing groups like the NTF-ELCAC, or at least making sure they don’t get just a slap on the wrist when they call someone red.