{"id":10277,"date":"2024-11-08T00:05:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T23:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=10277"},"modified":"2024-11-07T16:56:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T15:56:21","slug":"increasing-red-tagging-of-trade-unionists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/increasing-red-tagging-of-trade-unionists\/","title":{"rendered":"Increasing \u201cred-tagging\u201d of trade unionists"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent report, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) warns<\/a> that Philippine government officials and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) have increasingly been harassing trade union leaders through the practice of so-called \u201cred-tagging\u201d (i.e. branding individuals or organizations as \u201cterrorist\u201d).<\/p>\n

On September 25, 2024, HRW published<\/a> a report<\/a> on the threat situation of trade unionists in the Philippines. The report also reflects findings from the Global Rights Index 2024<\/a>, which has ranked the Philippines among the ten countries with the worst working conditions for the past eight years. HRW’s research in the region south of Manila, where many international companies operate in Special Economic Zones, showed that unionists are regularly threatened by state security forces, particularly through \u201cred-tagging.\u201d State security forces, often accompanied by municipal officials, are said to repeatedly visit<\/a> the homes of known trade unionists in order to discredit trade union work as allegedly subversive activities and to portray those concerned as alleged supporters of the communist, armed rebel group the New People’s Army (NPA).<\/p>\n

Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director of HRW, said<\/a> the \u201cthe Philippine government\u2019s sinister and times deadly practice of \u2018red-tagging\u2019 has become a serious threat to labor rights in the country.\u201d According to Lau, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. must<\/a> ensure that government officials end this abusive practice of \u201cred-tagging\u201d and uphold the right to unionize and bargain collectively. HRW warns<\/a> that it is also the responsibility of foreign companies to ensure that their Philippine workers are protected from harassment and violence in connection with \u201cred-tagging\u201d; otherwise, they run the risk of being complicit in human rights violations.<\/p>\n

On September 29, 2024, the first anniversary of the death of slain union leader Jude Fernandez<\/a>, the Gabriela party-list called<\/a> on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to stop the killing of labor rights activists. On September 29, 2023, security forces of the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) shot<\/a> Fernandez during a house search in Binangonan in the province of Rizal, claiming self-defense. The case remains<\/a> unsolved to this day.<\/p>\n

Civil society’s call for a legal basis for increased protection of the rights of human rights defenders has met with initial approval at local level: On October 24, 2024, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) lauded<\/a> the province of Basilan for passing its first ordinance on the protection of human rights defenders as an important step in the face of increasing threats against activists in the country.<\/p>\n

On October 14, 2024, Amnesty International published<\/a> a report on the effects of \u201cred-tagging.\u201d The report documented<\/a> how the current government under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the government of former President Rodrigo Duterte had used digital tools, misinformation and the Anti-Terrorism Act to intimidate young human rights defenders. Amnesty also made<\/a> clear reference to the frequent practice of \u201cred-tagging.\u201d The report documented how the current government under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the government of former President Rodrigo Duterte had<\/a> used digital tools, misinformation, and the national Anti-Terrorism Act to intimidate young human rights defenders.<\/p>\n

Amnesty also linked an increase in cases of \u201cred-tagging\u201d in 2018 to the NTF-ELCAC, which was founded in the same year and is known for the targeted \u201cred-tagging\u201d of human rights defenders. As part of the report publication, Amnesty International criticized<\/a> the company Meta for its inadequate \u201ccontent moderation\u201d of posts on its social media platform Facebook, which visibly encourages the \u201cred-tagging\u201d of young human rights defenders. According to Amnesty, this legitimizes further abuses, such as arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of activists. Jonathan Malaya, Deputy Director of the Philippine National Security Council, expressed<\/a> his frustration with the findings of the Amnesty report, describing it as \u201cone-sided, misleading, and baseless.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent report, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) warns that Philippine government officials and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) have increasingly been harassing trade union leaders through the practice of so-called \u201cred-tagging\u201d (i.e. branding individuals or organizations as \u201cterrorist\u201d). On September 25, 2024, HRW published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":5302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[73,63,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktuelles-en","category-human-rights-defenders","category-human-rights-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10351,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277\/revisions\/10351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}