VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Pamphlet in NICA orientation bears wrong definition of red-tagging

VERA Files
March 24, 2023

In early March, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) in CALABARZON hosted an orientation for government employees to discourage them from joining groups like Kilusang Mayo Uno and Alliance of Concerned Teachers.

After the event, the attendees were given a pamphlet which said, among other things, that red-tagging is a term coined by “communist terrorist groups” (CTG). This is false.

STATEMENT

The 23-page handout labeled five party-list organizations (Kabataan, GABRIELA Women’s Party, Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Alliance of Concerned Teachers) and at least 11 other civil society groups as “communist terrorist groups.” It defined red-tagging as:

“… isang salita na ginawa ng mga CTG upang siraan ang gobyerno na kumikilala lamang sa mga personalidad at mga organisasyon na miyembro, may kaugnayan, o sumusuporta sa komunistang teroristang grupo.”
(… a word coined by CTGs to discredit the government which recognizes only personalities and organizations that are members [of], with links [to], or supports communist terrorist groups.)

Source: Peace Philippines, Pamphlet, March 2023

The pamphlet distributed after the NICA-hosted talk did not have the agency’s logo on any of its pages. However, the last page bore the logo of Peace Philippines, a group that describes itself on its Facebook page as a youth-led organization of peace advocates against communist extremists.

FACT

Red-tagging is the “vilification, labeling or guilt by association” involving “the characterization of most groups on the left of the political spectrum as “front organizations” for armed groups whose aim is to destroy democracy,” former United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston stated in a preliminary note during his visit to the Philippines in 2007.

A 2011 study of Germany-based non-profit International Peace Observers Network (IPON) traced the origin of red-tagging or red-baiting to the 1950s in the United States (U.S.). At the time, then-Republican senator Joseph McCarthy publicly made unsubstantiated charges and unfounded accusations against U.S. federal government employees of having ties to or leaking information to the Soviet Union.

IPON defines red-tagging as:

“[T]he act of labeling, branding, naming and accusing individuals and/ or organizations of being left-leaning, subversives, communists or terrorists (used as) a strategy… by State agents, particularly law enforcement agencies and the military, against those perceived to be ‘threats’ or ‘enemies of the State’.”

Source: International Peace Observers Network (IPON), OBSERVER: A Journal on threatened Human Rights Defenders in the Philippines, Nov. 2, 2011

BACKSTORY

Peace Philippines is a Facebook page created 19 days after then-president Rodrigo Duterte signed into law the Anti-Terrorism Act on July 3, 2020.

The page habitually uploads photos which red-tag activists, religious groups and personalities, and even lawmakers without evidence.

These posts were shared multiple times by former NICA director general Alex Paul Monteagudo who, based on reports, has a track record of sharing disinformation online.

(Read VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Reader asks why intel chief shares inaccurate, unsubstantiated claims vs SENADO, COURAGE)

NICA’s director general sits as a member of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, a position that Monteagudo held during the Duterte administration and now occupied by Ricardo De Leon, a retired deputy director general of the Philippine National Police.

NICA has been holding these orientation events for government employees at least as early as June 2020, based on a report by a government-run news agency.

VERA Files Fact Check sought an official statement from NICA-CALABARZON regarding the pamphlet distributed in their orientation, but was “assured” that the office would get in touch with its reporter instead.

As of writing, NICA-CALABARZON has not reached out to VERA Files Fact Check.