Red-tagging has been a fixture of every president’s cling to power. In President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s term, this reality manifests in the 1,609,496 individuals who have been harassed and assaulted, mainly as part of state-sanctioned red-tagging campaigns, from July 2022 until December 2023, according to rights group Karapatan.
Marcos inherited this whopping number from then president Rodrigo Duterte, who harnessed red-tagging as a government apparatus to stifle dissent. Duterte even institutionalized red-baiting when he created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and approved the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Former Bayan Muna Rep. Siegfred Deduro repeatedly found himself at the receiving end of these unfounded allegations. In June 2020, Iloilo’s local peace and order council maliciously marked Deduro as high in the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army’s (CPP-NPA) hierarchy. This was a repeat offense, as in 2017 when posters and other paraphernalia were scattered across Visayas labeling him as a CPP-NPA lieutenant without any basis.
These are pressing contexts against which to consider the Supreme Court’s decision last May 8, which declared red-tagging a hazard to liberty and security. Red-tagging, per the Supreme Court, “threaten[s] a person's right to life, liberty, or security,” and also constitutes grounds for the provision of a writ of amparo, a protective remedy conferred to those whose safety is threatened by unlawful acts.
It must be noted, however, that Deduro’s case has been remanded to the trial court to determine if he is entitled to a court-sanctioned protection order. At its core, the decision orders the military officials and their agents to court and answer the accusations that they’ve been red-tagging the former lawmaker.
The Supreme Court’s decision nullifies the usual get-out clause state officials resort to when charged with red-tagging: that there exists no concrete definition of it. By delineating its contours, the Supreme Court gives red-tagged individuals the legal muscle to formally charge their offenders.
Yet, there is still a vacuum in accompanying legislation that could criminalize red-tagging. Although the Supreme Court’s decision gives red-tagged individuals a legal basis to defend their rights, it fails to circumscribe the punishment that awaits perpetrators. Noted jurist Antonio La Viña had warned that by itself, the writ of amparo’s protective edge has waned, owing to bureaucracy in substantiating the damages incurred by petitioners.
If anything, the decision was long overdue. It is the sort of support that could have expedited the petition for writ of amparo that Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro, for instance, filed in February, following their illegal abduction by the 70th Infantry Battalion. If the ruling translates into legislation, it can also preempt summary executions like those of Bayan Muna coordinator Jory Porquia, activist Zara Alvarez, lawyer Benjamin Ramos and countless others.
Formal condemnation of red-tagging calls for the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC, because red-tagging was the capital around which all of its operations revolved. This, and not a blatant denial of the government’s hand in red-tagging, as Marcos had done in an ambush interview on Thursday.
As the first definition of red-tagging provided by a court in the Philippines, the high court’s decision opens opportunities to strengthen existing and future complaints against red-taggers. However, no legal headway can bring back those lost to state-sanctioned barbarism. Instead, the state can do justice to lives once lived by foiling the weapon that took them. ●
