“The National Union of Journalists denounces the renewed red-tagging in Cagayan do Oro City [CDO] of journalists by cowards who hide behind anonymity to spread their calumny,” said National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) in a statement from its Directorate on February 29.
The statement referred to flyers red-tagging several journalists and media groups that were “distributed immediately after journalists held a candle-lighting ceremony in front of the ABS-CBN Northern Mindanao Station in CDO City yesterday, February 28,” according to NUJP Western Mindanao Safety Office.
The office noted that “similar incidents since 2018 which accuses the NUJP and the journalists named above, along with activists, lawyers, members of the academe, and church leaders of being communists and/or supporters of the CPP/NPA/NDF” have happened before this latest incident of red-tagging.
It also reported that “pamphlets were handed over to journalists who attended the protest action in support of ABS-CBN by a tricycle driver who said he was hired and paid P200 by two men and instructed to give the pamphlets to the journalists gathered at the ABS-CBN station.”
NUJP noted how from previous circulation of ‘false accusations’ against a handful of local journalists, the list has grown. Those who have been red-tagged in the locality before included NUJP-CDO chair Pamela Jay Orias, long-time members and former officers Froilan Gallardo and Cong Corrales, and Joey Nacalaban, all of them also members of the CDO Club.
New names included in the red-tagging efforts are NUJP chair Nonoy Espina and his sister and former NUJP chair Inday Espina-Varona, the Radyo ni Juan network (also branded a ‘communist radio station’) and its reporter Loi Algarme, and Radyo Natin anchor Renwynx ‘Don’ Morgado.
NUJP believes that the red-tagging have two aims: to continue the vilification campaign against NUJP and other independent journalists parallel to the efforts of the government’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC) and to paint the campaign for the renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise as an anti-government activity.
In December 2018, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No. 70 creating the NTF ELCAC, which is under the counter-insurgency program of his administration.
The NTF ELCAC will co-oopt or subsume the whole bureaucracy (all local government units and other civilian government agencies) in the anti-communist insurgency campaign of the government in a police state-like existence and permanent undeclared martial rule, according to Karapatan Metro Manila.
Red-tagging the media
On February 22 last year, in a human rights forum, an unknown person gave out a document that listed red-tagged individuals and groups in CDO. Written in Bisaya, the pamphlet introduced the persons, including journalists and church people as ‘the members of the Communist Party of the Philippines here in our city that are aspiring to topple the government.’
Human Rights Watch responded to the red-tagging incident in CDO last year, saying “There is no other way to describe the list but as a threat against the lives of those on it. Dozens of individuals have been targeted for extrajudicial or summary killing in the Philippines after they were labeled as communist.”
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an independent NGO defending freedom of expression and information, noted that red-tagged individuals are vulnerable to death threats and violence.
RSF condemned the Philippine military’s practice of turning certain journalists into targets by arbitrarily designating them as “communists” after Northern Dispatch journalist Brandon Lee who has been red-tagged by military was ‘ambushed and shot several times, sustaining serious gunshot injuries to the face, neck and back, and nearly dying’ in August 2019.
Lee’s media outfit said of the incident, “the completely arbitrary practice of labelling persons as “red” or “communist” encourages violence against its victims, especially by paramilitaries.”
NUJP said the latest red-tagging incident was meant to intimidate journalists and the general public but “will inevitably fail as all attempts, including that of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, to silence the independent Philippine media have failed.”
