No amount of apology could fix the potential threat to their security following the tagging incident.
CAGAYAN DE ORO — Progressive groups in Southern Mindanao criticized the response of a police official following an incident that tagged several activists as wanted persons, seeing it as an attempt to reduce the false accusations as a mere “inconvenience.”
Fauzhea Guiani, spokesperson of Anakbayan Southern Mindanao, stressed that no amount of apology could fix the potential threat to their security following the tagging incident.
Human rights group Karapatan Southern Mindanao, on the other hand, demanded an answer as to where the Cateel Municipal Police Station in Davao Oriental got such information. “[The Philippine National Police] Cateel must answer for this.”
On May 27, Guiani and 13 others were tagged as “Active Wanted Persons” by the Cateel police through now-deleted social media posts, bearing their names, photographs, and their affiliations with various progressive groups. This incident drew strong condemnations.
Read:Southern Mindanao progressives as ‘active wanted persons’?
Local news outfit Davao Today reported on Friday the response of Major Michael Celecio, Cateel police chief. The latter apologized to the involved individuals, saying an incorrect photo was posted on their Facebook page.
Kabataan Partylist Southern Mindanao, however, doubted the police chief’s statement. “Collating information—accurate or not—and creating publicity material and posting it online is not as mere a clerical error as he is seemingly suggesting.”
Cobbie Jan Canda, chairperson of Kabataan Partylist Southern Mindanao, said Celecio’s apology is insufficient, considering the danger, anxiety, and reputational damage caused by the incident.
In a press conference on Friday, May 29, Alyssa Ancheta, chairperson of Gabriela Youth Davao, among those tagged as wanted persons, pointed out that it may not technically be red-tagging, but it could be a precursor to it or to even graver human rights violations.
Human rights alliance Karapatan earlier said this practice of tagging individuals as criminals is the “handwork” of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
Even the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), in its recent report following its national inquiry on red-tagging, documented alleged red-tagging incidents perpetrated by former and current members of NTF-ELCAC, including personalities involved in military and law enforcement operations.
Read:Rights commission report affirms detrimental outcomes of red-tagging — groups
Grecian Asoy, deputy secretary-general of Karapatan Southern Mindanao, said this incident reinforced their calls to abolish the task force.
Progressive groups were keen on filing a complaint to CHR. They were also considering filing charges against police personnel involved.
The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) also condemned the PNP for labeling human rights defenders as such saying that in the numerous cases they have handled such vilification led to intimidation, harassment, unlawful arrests on fabricated charges, enforced disappearances, and killings.
“Red-tagging, as these cases make plain, is used to justify attacks against individuals and organizations engaged in legitimate human rights and development work,” NUPL said in a statement.
The consequences of such practice by state forces also go beyond the defenders, the NUPL said. Such public and baseless vilification has shrunk civic space and cut off humanitarian services from the communities that need them most.
“When rights defenders step in to provide aid that the state fails to deliver and demand accountability for that failure, they are vilified by the very institutions obligated to serve the people. For some, such vilification has proven fatal,” the group said, adding their call for a full and impartial investigation into the incident. They also demanded that all those responsible be held accountable. (With reports from Anne Marxze Umil) (RTS)
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