Lawyer's group vows to protect members vs. gov't red-tagging
An organization of lawyers has vowed to continue protecting its members and those of the legal community against what it branded as “continued red-tagging by the government.”
“The NUPL vows to continue its fight against the vilification and attacks against its members and all members of the legal community in particular and against all other victims of this reckless gambit in general which is at war with due process and the so-called ‘rule of law’,” the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) said in a statement Sunday night.
The group issued the statement after learning that one of its members became another victim of red-tagging.
“The NUPL reiterates its strong condemnation against the misrepresentations and half-truths spread by the government’s TF-ELCACs (Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict),” the statement said.
The NUPL declared that “these arbitrary red-tagging gone berserk poses a clear and present danger for those who are challenging the Anti-Terrorism Act in the forum we have chosen: the trenches and foxholes in the battles against State overreach, fully armed with the law, evidence, reason, principles and the truth.”
The group cited that a December 2019 news report of the Palawan News showed that the ELCAC Palawan has cleared from having links with the New People’s Army (NPA) a certain Kenneth Tabla, alias Kenneth Pratt, who was described as the NUPL provincial coordinator.
“Upon diligent verification, it appears that a certain Keneth Pratt is indeed a law student member of NUPL,” the group added.
“But the NUPL would like to make it clear nonetheless that it neither has any existing chapter nor any law student organization in the province of Palawan, much less has there been an NUPL ‘provincial coordinator’ ever been appointed or authorized in Palawan,” it clarified.
The NUPL said the incident showed “how the government’s national and local TF-ELCACs maliciously bend facts and engage in innuendos to taint and wreck the reputation and person of individuals and groups they have been red-tagging.”