Manila: While it acknowledges the final report of United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Irene Khan, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) on Tuesday urged the official to interview former communist rebels and supporters to get the other side of the story and have a better idea of the Philippines' communist insurgency problem.
According to Philippines News Agency, NTF-ELCAC Executive Director, Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr., issued the statement days after Khan's 18-page report was made public, claiming that Philippine laws have been weaponized against rights and press freedom advocates. "While we have yet to receive a copy of the final report, we nonetheless receive her observations with respect. Freedom of expression is not an inconvenience to democracy but one of its strongest foundations," he said.
Likewise, Torres said, the Philippine situation cannot be fairly understood through a single lens, or through narratives that begin and end with claims of repression. "For more than five decades, it has been lived painfully by farmers, indigenous peoples, workers, students, teachers, parents, local officials, former rebels, and families whose loved ones were recruited, exploited, threatened, extorted, displaced, or killed," he said.
Torres urged Khan and all international mechanisms examining the Philippines to also speak with an open mind to former Communist Party of the Philippines - New People's Army - National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) cadres, former members of underground mass organizations, former student and youth organizers, former combatants, indigenous peoples' leaders, grieving parents, and their communities, to know their stories while inside the movement. "Their stories are essential to any honest and comprehensive understanding of the insurgency, especially in grasping how the CPP-NPA-NDF continues to use legal and democratic spaces to agitate, organize, and recruit marginalized and vulnerable communities toward armed violence," he said.
"They understood its structures, carried out its political and organizational work, and later chose to leave because they saw, firsthand, the deception, coercion, violence, and exploitation that sustained it. If the international community is serious about human rights, then the testimonies of those who suffered inside the CPP-NPA-NDF system must be heard with the same seriousness given to those who accuse the State."
Torres said this is important when laws on terrorism financing and child protection are described as instruments to 'weaponize' the law. "The enforcement of law against terrorism financing, recruitment, exploitation of minors, extortion, and material support to armed violence is not, by itself, the weaponization of law. It is the duty of a democratic State to protect its people. It only becomes a weapon when law is used without evidence, without due process, and without accountability," he said.
Torres also added that accountability cannot be one-sided. "When communities seek protection from recruitment and exploitation, the State cannot simply look away. We risk erasing the victims when we carelessly label every prosecution as 'persecution.' It can also provide immunity to those who use civic language to support, enable, finance, or normalize armed violence," he said.
He also reiterated that human rights violations are not the policy of and not acceptable to the government. Allegations must be addressed through proper mechanisms, and government personnel who violate the law must be held accountable, Torres said.
