• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has asked legislators in the 20th Congress to prioritize laws protecting people from recruitment into violent extremism.
Let us not forget our victimized youth, the latest of whom was Jhon Isidor ‘Dee’ Supelanas of Kabataan Partylist, who, like many before him, began as students, became spokespersons, and ended as casualties of the New People’s Army. We cannot allow more lives to follow that same tragic arc, said Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr., the NTF-ELCAC executive director.
Supelanas was among the seven suspected New People’s Army rebels who died in an encounter with Army soldiers on April 27 in Barangay Tapi, Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental. He was also reported by the Philippine Army to be a political instructor of the dismantled South West Front Komiteng Rehiyonal Negros/Cebu/Bohol/Siquijor.
In a statement, Torres said the NTF-ELCAC is also hoping that Congress will enact laws that institutionalize peace education and civic resilience in schools, while protecting campuses from infiltration by recruiters masquerading as activists.
Such legislation would empower Department of Education and Commission of Higher Education to develop integrated anti-terror-grooming modules and peacebuilding curriculum, and establish vetting mechanisms for student organizations under local peace and security councils, he added
In this way, we promote values in their most impactful form—disiplina, malasakit, and civic awareness over dogma and deception, Torres further said.
We look forward to the opportunity to engage Congress in crafting legislative measures that seek to criminalize organized recruitment, ideological grooming, and psychological manipulation of minors, students, women, and other vulnerable sectors into terrorist or insurgent activity, the NTF-ELCAC executive director added.
Torres noted that terror recruitment and grooming in the country is carried out through so-called “legal democratic organizations” that operate in the open while serving the underground armed insurgency of the CPP-NPA-NDF.
These are the very fronts that capitalize on the “red-tagging” narrative to evade scrutiny and accountability, Torres claimed.
The NTF-ELCAC also urged ML partylist Rep. Leila De Lima and other legislators to prioritize laws that protect the Filipino people from recruitment into violent extremism, rather than inadvertently legalizing a cover for its machinery.
Rep. de Lima’s concern about red-tagging, if not tempered by evidence-based guardrails, risks turning into a smokescreen that benefits the architects of terrorism, Torres said.
Legislation must protect legitimate dissent, yes, but it must also prevent the systematic destruction of lives through ideological grooming, he added.
We are ready to work with all lawmakers to craft laws that advance human rights without becoming blind to the rights of the victims of terrorism. Let us protect truth, not illusion. Let us protect the people, not their groomers and recruiters, Torres further stressed.*
