Yesterday, May 4, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the government’s leading anti-insurgency body, released a statement titled “An Insurgency-Free Philippines is on the Horizon” that presents its analysis of the state and future of the government’s fight against the insurgency.

The statement, signed by NTF-ELCAC vice-chairperson  and National Security Adviser Eduardo Año, is deafeningly silent on the agency’s hand in human rights violations and in fact warns of more of such violations. It justifies its practice of red-tagging progressive organizations and demands continued government funding for its flawed militaristic framework.

The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) strongly condemns the NTF-ELCAC’s statement. There is much that can be contested in the information about the state of insurgency that was presented by the agency. The statement only strengthened CTUHR’s claim that the NTF-ELCAC’s counter-insurgency framework has resulted in grave human rights violations in the labor movement, on which the agency is silent.

We cite the following facts: 72 labor activists were extrajudicially killed under the presidency of the NTF-ELCAC’s creator, Rodrigo Duterte. Numerous labor activists were imprisoned due to trumped-up charges and planted evidence under the NTF-ELCAC’s leadership, and 23 remain in prison to this day. Two labor organizers, Loi Magbanua and William Lariosa, were abducted under the Ferdinand Marcos Jr presidency and remain missing to this day. Human rights group Karapatan can present a more comprehensive report on human rights violations in the country.

Not only is the NTF-ELCAC silent on rights violations, it justifies its practice that has served as a pretext for these violations – redtagging. Branding legal progressive organizations as “the urban operators of a protracted war strategy,” the agency continues to willfully conflate labor organizing and other kinds of activism with support for the insurgency.

In justifying red-tagging, the NTF-ELCAC therefore flouts the recommendations of United Nations Special Rapporteurs and the International Labour Organization High-Level Tripartite Mission to the Philippines in 2023. It even goes against the much-ballyhooed Executive Order No. 23, Series of 2023 on “Reinforcing and Protecting the Freedom of Association and Right to Organize of Workers,” which supposedly bans governmennt agencies from engaging in red-tagging.

The NTF-ELCAC’s statement therefore signals more rights violations to come. It already declares its plan to impose more restrictive regulations on NGOs and people’s organizations and to violate universities’ academic freedom in the guise of strengthening “collaboration” with them.

The NTF-ELCAC brags about its Barangay Development Program or BDP, which is not about creating genuine development in the countryside at all, but merely creates a militaristic-security network at the grassroots that is also a machinery for human rights violations. It talks about supporting former rebels but many indications show that the NTF-ELCAC has abducted, coerced and bribed them into giving information about the insurgency.

With this statement, the NTF-ELCAC is asking the government for greater funding. The Marcos Jr administration must shun this appeal, as heeding it will mean continued human rights violations. The NTF-ELCAC’s framework remains militaristic and does not address the root causes of the armed insurgency – landlessness, joblessness, and lack of opportunities – and makes its invocation of “justice, dignity, and shared hope” mere empty rhetoric.