Will ‘Red-Tagging’ in the Philippines Really End With Duterte?

Rodrigo Duterte burst into office in 2016 by promising to end the Philippines’ long-running communist insurgency not with force, but with dialogue.

The president – who had years of experience negotiating with rebels as mayor of Davao, the largest city of Mindanao – immediately opened peace talks with the New People’s Army (NPA) and its political wing, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Duterte also welcomed progressive politicians into his cabinet, most notably the late Gina Lopez, who as environment minister sought to close the country’s destructive yet profitable mines.

The country’s progressive groups, who had grown wary of being branded as terrorists for expressing left-leaning ideas, were cautiously optimistic.

But their hopes were quickly dashed. The progressive ministers were all driven from office within months, while the peace talks fell apart in 2017 and never regained serious momentum. Instead, Duterte in 2018 assembled the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), a team of military officers who accused legal progressive groups of secretly supporting the NPA and baselessly branded public figures, especially women, as communist sympathizers – a practice known as “red-tagging.” As the country’s rights record spiraled downward, Duterte gave the controversial agency a cash injection.

Human rights and civil society groups have begged incoming President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to end the practice and, much like his predecessor, Marcos has given them early hope. He appointed Clarita Carlos, a former University of the Philippines professor, as security adviser and vice chairperson of the NTF-ELCAC. Carlos said last month she intended to end the misuse of the “communist” label. “I would like to stop red-tagging,” she said. “Labels do not produce anything. It’s not productive.”

It’s difficult to keep count of who’s been red-tagged. The list ranges from Miss Universe winner Catriona Gray, to former Vice President Leni Robredo, to nongovernmental groups including Oxfam. And while several government and military officials joined in the Duterte-era red-tagging spree, its main drivers were NTF-ELCAC spokespeople Antonio Parlade, who resigned last year amid controversy, and Lorraine Badoy, who remains in her position.

Rights groups and progressives reacted to Carlos’ comment with cautious optimism, much like they did with some of Duterte’s sunnier promises. But actually enacting change would mean pushing back against a deep institutional acceptance within the military of tagging political opponents as communists, which can conveniently justify deadly police and military operations against falsely tagged Indigenous and land rights activists in rural, resource-rich regions. If Duterte’s progressive appointees taught us anything, it’s that reforming entrenched anti-communist attitudes is easier said than done.

Days after Carlos made her vow, National Security Adviser Heromgenes Esperon Jr. asked the National Telecommunications Commission to block several websites for being associated with “communist terrorist groups.” The sites included the independent news organizations Bulatlat and Pinoy Weekly, along with progressive groups including Save Our Schools Network, Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, and BAYAN.

All have long histories of being red-tagged, and Esperon reiterated this by telling the NTC they are “affiliated to and are supporting these [terrorists] and terrorist organizations,” without providing any evidence.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, described the attempted blocking as “yet another dimension to the government’s outrageous, rights abusing efforts to red-tag and harass civil society actors, including journalists and activists.”

Bulatlat – which opened in 2001 to shed light on marginalized sectors, especially the urban and rural poor – called the blocking a “brazen violation of our right to publish, and of the public’s right to free press and free expression.”

The Philippines’ anti-terrorism law, which was controversially passed in 2020, allows the government to block websites based on “probable cause” of terrorist activities. Red-tagging, however, doesn’t require probable cause – just an official asserting that a given person or group is a communist sympathizer because they said so. If that’s enough to block a website, then Carlos will have plenty of work ahead of her to prove those labels are unproductive.