Women-alliance group GABRIELA Caloocan was reportedly raided today, February 17, after unidentified individuals forcibly entered and ransacked the premises.
In a quick response led by Karapatan National Capital Region and Defend CAMANAVA, they stumbled upon various office materials and personal belongings scattered across the floor with some items reportedly stolen.
Karapatan NCR recalled the incident of police presence and surveillance in the office last October 28, where armed police officers also forcibly entered the building multiple times and conducted surveillance operations.
Defend CAMANAVA linked the situation following the military deployment, particularly the 11th and 12th Civil-Military Operations Battalions in Metro Manila since 2023. They also lambasted the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) for the surveillance and harassment of community organizers and activists.
On February 5, NTF-ELCAC declared Metro Manila as “ground zero of Communist Party of the Philippines–New People’s Army–National Democratic Front (CPP–NPA–NDF) so-called “disinformation”.
“This is pure invention—a smokescreen designed to legitimate what’s already happening on the ground: the systematic red-tagging, surveillance, and harassment of urban poor groups, labor unions, and human rights defenders in NCR,” said Karapatan NCR in a statement, noting that they have seen this playbook before.
In 2019, CAMANAVA was dubbed a “communist hotbed” following the implementation of the whole-of-nation approach under Executive Order No. 70 during the former Duterte administration. Since then, 11th CMO have been deployed in various barangays across CAMANAVA where they have conducted so-called community support programs.
Karapatan NCR stressed that such raid operations, surveillance, and red-tagging are not responses to “real threats” but a part of continuing state-enforced repression targeting activists and community leaders in Metro Manila.
“The surge in red-tagging incidents we’re documenting across NCR—against transport groups, against community organizers, against lawyers defending political prisoners—is not a response to communist propaganda. It is the policy. It is the NTF-ELCAC’s playbook being tested in real time, in our neighborhoods, on our campuses, in our streets,” the group stated.
“The lie that every critic is a communist. The lie that every activist is a front. The lie that every call for accountability is part of some grand conspiracy hatched in the countryside and now “weaponized” online. That’s not counter-insurgency. That’s authoritarianism pretending to be policy,” they added.
This year, NTF-ELCAC is set to have a budget allocation at a whopping P8.08 billion under the Support to the Barangay Development Program in the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP), a jump from the P1.95 billion it received in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Karapatan NCR, Defend CAMANAVA, and GABRIELA Caloocan reiterated their call to abolish NTF-ELCAC and instead rechannel its funds to basic social services.
“Karapatan-NCR stands with every organization, every community, every individual being targeted by this escalating repression. We will continue to document, to expose, and to resist[…] We will not be silenced,” the statement ended.
