The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) celebrates journalist Atom Araullo’s legal victory against government officials Lorraine Badoy and Jeffrey Celiz. This victory is yet another reason for the abolition of that the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), of which Badoy and Celiz are the public faces.

In a court decision dated December 12, 2024, Judge Dolly Rose Bolante-Prado of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 306 ruled that Badoy and Celiz abused the right to free speech by red-tagging Araullo and his mother, Carol Pagaduan-Araullo, chairperson emeritus of progressive umbrella organization Bagong Alyansang Makabayan or Bayan.

The court said that red-tagging, as well as “vilification, labelling, and guilt by association,” form “threats to a person’s right to life, liberty, or security,” and that freedom of expression does not cover defamation and implicating a person in terrorism which thereby puts that person’s life under threat.

The court ordered Badoy and Celiz to pay Araullo PhP 2.07 million in damages and PhP 10,000 for attorney’s fees and cost of filing the case. Judge Bolante-Prado cited the May 2024 Supreme Court ruling on the Deduro vs. Maj Gen. Vinoya case that recognizes red-tagging as a threat to fundamental rights.

Red-tagging, Lorraine Badoy, Jeffrey Celiz and the NTF-ELCAC have become synonyms in the public mind. One cannot mention one without the other. Atom Araullo’s legal victory against Badoy and Celiz is a rebuke to red-tagging and the NTF-ELCAC. It provides yet another basis to abolish the red-tagging government agency.

In trying to “end” the “local communist armed conflict,” the NTF-ELCAC saw as part of its role the identification of those whom it accuses of being communist fronts. This poses a danger to people who are red-tagged, because the NTF-ELCAC is a machinery for the government’s militarist approach to the armed conflict.

No less than the International Labour Organization Tripartite High Level Mission to the Philippines and a handful of United Nations Special Rapporteurs have called for the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC. We reiterate this demand to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr: abolish the red-tagging agency now!

The NTF-ELCAC has been instrumental to the Philippine government’s conflation of labor rights activism – as well as social activism, development work, and other human rights-affirming activities – with support for the armed insurgency. Marcos Jr’s refusal to abolish it exposes his declared commitment to human rights and democracy as mere doublespeak.

Atom Araullo’s legal victory will not be possible without the service of people’s lawyers and was reported on the same day that the 2024 Bar Examination passers were announced. We call on the new lawyers to take a stand for labor and human rights and against red-tagging and serve the Filipino workers and people.