A teacher and the community of UP Rural High School are the recent targets of red-tagging by former National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) spokesperson Lorraine Badoy.
On October 6, Badoy red-tagged UP Rural High School teacher Trist’n Buenaflor. Before this, Badoy, in a series of Facebook posts, also red-tagged faculty members and students of the UP Rural High School after the UP Day Remembrance of Martial Law.
The UP Rural High School released a statement on October 1, condemning the red-tagging by Badoy and a military agent named “Emjay Chico.”
“We believe in developing learners who can think critically and engage with the complex problems confronting Philippine society and affecting their basic rights to education, decent life, and human dignity,” the statement reads. “It is deeply concerning that a legitimate educational activity and those who participated in it have been subjected to red-tagging.”
The University asserts the right to academic freedom: fostering discourse that is open, informed, and grounded in evidence.
For his part, Buenaflor has stood his ground.
“All I can say is that I love teaching, and I deeply value my university. I am not afraid,” Buenaflor told Bulatlat in an interview. “I will continue my studies and continue teaching and serving society. I will keep moving forward.”
The Supreme Court of the Philippines already ruled that red-tagging, vilification, labeling, and guilt by association threaten a person’s right to life, liberty, and security.
Read: SC rules: Red-tagging is threat to life, liberty
Buenaflor is a children’s book author, teacher, Christian activist, and unionist. He was the founding chair of UP Baguio Bahaghari until he graduated in 2019.
After this, he became the deputy spokesperson of the Student Christian Movement in the Philippines in 2020.
These affiliations are branded by Badoy as “fronts” of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Buenaflor is also part of Kinaiya, a collective of LGBT writers, essaysists, poets, book authors all over the Philippines.
“Red-tagging is a threat to our freedom of expression and our right to participate in social issues,” Kinaiya pointed out in a statement. “This has no space in a democratic society. Participating in the issues that affect us should not be a reason to threaten everyone’s lives, including our teachers and students.”
As of this writing, Badoy and another former NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Eric Jeffrey Celiz continue with a series of red-tagging posts. They used a Bulatlat feature article as justification for their terrorist-tagging. The article cited by Celiz and Badoy is a feature story about Buenaflor’s queer children stories.
Read: Rainbow realities: A queer author writes radical stories for children
Bahaghari, the organization that Badoy accused of being tied with the Communist Party of the Philippines, released a statement standing in solidarity with Buenaflor.
“Bahaghari is at the forefront of advancing the rights and welfare of the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as fighting discrimination and oppression. While Trist’n and other human rights defenders devote their efforts to defending the rights of the people, red-taggers such as Lorraine Badoy have instead chosen to subject them to dangerous allegations,” Bahaghari said.
More UP Rural High School teachers, organizations, and alliances also joined the call to end the red-tagging of their school and its community.
“Widespread and baseless red-tagging is undoubtedly a mechanism of violence, fascism, and oppression against our freedom and democracy. Guns, intimidation, and militarization are not the path to genuine and lasting peace,” the UPHRS Student Council, student publication, and academic organizations said in a joint statement.
“What the people need is to address the root causes of poverty through adequate funding for education and other social services, genuine land reform for farmers, and fair wages and job security for workers,” the groups added. (RTS, RVO)
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