“Complainants have been targeted for their critical and independent reporting on issues affecting the marginalized and oppressed sectors. They are being persecuted for publishing progressive and alternative views on matters affecting the Filipino people — progressive ideas that are anathema to the current tyrannical regime.”
Church leaders expressed alarm and concern at the deteriorating prospects for peace as shown by the Rodrigo Duterte government’s demonization of human rights.
“Rights are not won through silence, through fence sitting and inaction. Rights are won and claimed through difficult, arduous, beautiful, creative and vibrant struggle.”
“The complainants bring the instant action in order to finally address a continuing wrong, to vindicate their basic rights, and to remind public officials that illegal, improper, unjust and oppressive acts and utterances, especially those vicious and virulent, are not without consequence. We also just want to do our work as lawyers,” the complaint read.
The red-taggers’ mantra “If you are not with us, you are against us” is so skewed and illogical. The media’s role is to serve as a watchdog of wrongdoings especially by those in power.
The complaint said the red-tagging of Cristina Palabay, Karapatan and its members and officers by the respondents violates the principle of distinction under international and domestic humanitarian law.
By DEE AYROSO
By DEE AYROSO
President Duterte’s people need to get their act together and stop this game of putting innocent people’s lives and security at stake.
“All these mean longer work hours, sleepless nights, no-weekends for teachers, and that’s only for one modality.”
It seems that time is up for reckoning on the crude, arrogant and irresponsible red-tagging campaign, waged mainly by the military and police at the behest of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Confict or NTF-ELCAC. Created and nominally headed by President Duterte, the task force is overseen by his national…