STOP THE ATTACKS! STOP THE INTIMIDATION AND HARASSMENT ON YOUTH AND THEIR FAMILIES!

The Duterte administration is creating yet another fear among the Filipino youth. This time, targeting the families of human rights defenders.

Recently, Anakbayan national chairperson Alex Danday and her family have experienced intimidation and harassment as police officers introduced themselves as personnel from Camp Crame in Quezon City — forcing Danday to surrender herself to authorities.

Last December 7, 2020, progressive youth groups filed criminal and administrative charges against Duterte and known officials of the National Task Force To End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) for their continuous red-tagging and attacks against the youth at the offices of the Ombudsman and Commission on Human Rights.

To vilify the mass movement, the Duterte administration continues to hound its critics through series of red-tagging, military surveillance, forcible raids of offices of progressive groups through baseless search warrants, planting of evidence, and trump-up charges, and ultimately kill its dissenters.

The current administration has been a rabid fan of red-tagging and fabricating stories such as the fake “Red October plot,” “missing minors,” senate soap drama, and fake “New People’s Army (NPA) surrenderees.”

How can we trust our own military forces when they are not even capable of defeating the 52-year-old armed conflicts in the country? More so, how can we trust them when they are the purveyor of violence and disinformation in this country? After all, the regime and its state forces’ goal is to crush activism to the ground while being the sole reason for our ever-worsening economic and political conditions even amid the pandemic.

The College Editors Guild of the Philippines strongly denounces this “Oplan Tokhang” style of the Duterte administration by taunting the families of human rights defenders.

As for all student journalists who have experienced several campus press freedom violations, we will continue to fight back. Despite the relentless attacks, we will continue to stand for the exposition of truth against the tyranny of the state. We reiterate our strong position that fighting for people’s basic rights was not, is not, and will never be a crime. The Guild and its member publications will stand valiantly against the evilness of the current regime. We will stand as a growing resistance to fight all the atrocious actions of the state.

#StopTheAttacks