Labor NGO Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) condemned President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s statement today, relayed to the media by National Security Council Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya, that he will “never” abolish the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.

May we remind President Marcos Jr that the NTF-ELCAC is a legacy of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his bloody war on drugs. Duterte created the NTF-ELCAC to silence critics of the drug war killings and other human rights violations under his rule. It is reprehensible that Marcos Jr sees the need to send Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC) but not end the former president’s legacies.

Malaya said the president recognizes the successes of the NTF-ELCAC in “decimating the terrorist activities” of rebel groups New People’s Army (NPA), Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). He said the president is encouraged by reports about the NTF-ELCAC’s successes, and will continue to invest in the agency, saying that the NPA is at its weakest in 50 years.

As far as labor and human rights groups are concerned, we do not associate the word “success” with the NTF-ELCAC; we associate the agency with grave rights violations. In supposedly going after terrorists, the government has acted like a monster, violating the rights of activists and leaders of labor and other marginalized sectors of society.

CTUHR cited a report it co-authored with national labor center Federation of Free Workers (FFW) titled “2024 Workers’ Rights Watch Report on the State of Freedom of Association in the Philippines” in which labor and human rights violations committed by Philippine government, with the major participation of the NTF-ELCAC, were presented.

NTF-ELCAC pushed for, implemented, and justified the extrajudicial killing of so many labor activists and leaders, the disappearance of a handful of labor organizers, and the harassment of numerous union officials to force them to disaffiliate from their labor centers.

There are currently 25 political prisoners from the labor movement who continue to be in prison because of the Duterte government and the NTF-ELCAC. Marcos Jr should make a statement about them, their immediate release and the immediate junking of fabricated charges against them – not about maintaining the NTF-ELCAC.

The Marcos Jr government has not lived up to its promise of protecting labor and human rights of Filipino workers. Sending Duterte to the ICC deserves many follow-up actions that dismantle the legacies of Duterte and his bloody war on drugs.