The Supreme Court (SC) is set to resume on Tuesday, May 4, its online oral arguments on 37 petitions against the constitutionality of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020, the law blamed by some sectors as behind the “red-tagging” and profiling of several persons and groups, including certain organizers of community pantries.
SC justices are expected to continue with their interpellations of the lawyers of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), the government’s law firm which presented last Tuesday, April 27, the justifications for the enactment of ATA.
It is not known if the interpellations would be terminated on Tuesday. Once finished, the SC is expected to call its appointed “friends of the court” – retired Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno and then Associate Justice Francis H. Jardeleza – to air their views on ATA.
Last April 27, Solicitor General Jose C. Calida asked the SC to dismiss all the 37 petitions.
Calida said the enactment of ATA is political in nature that cannot be delved into by the courts, there are supervening events that warrant the dismissal of the petitions, and petitioners do not have legal standing to challenge the law.
He told the SC that ATA “is not an instrument of oppression and neither is it a tool to suppress the vibrance of our democracy.”
He stressed that ATA “is the embodiment of the State’s policy to protect life, liberty, and property from terrorism – a commitment to peace in our day and the future of our children.”
Petitioners against ATA had pressed the SC to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would immediately stop the implementation of the law that started on July 18, 2020.
Last April 29, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said that ATA may have emboldened some officials in the security sector to “red-tag” certain persons and groups.
“There is reason to believe na baka merong (that there might be) linkage somehow,” Guevarra said in an interview over ANC.
Several members of advocacy groups, including organizers of community pantries which dole out food to the needy, have complaint of “red-tagging” by government law enforcement agencies.
Guevarra’s view was aired amidst criticisms against officials of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) for their “red-tagging” activities which have reportedly been endangering the lives of persons they are linking to the communist terrorist group.
“There may be some point to the argument because there is a provision in the Anti-Terrorism Law (Republic Act No. 11479) about recruitment and membership in terrorist organizations and punishes those acts accordingly,” Guevarra explained.
He reminded that RA 1700, the Anti-Subversion Law which was passed in 1957, outlawed the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). But RA 1700 was repealed in 1992.
After the repeal, he said that it was no longer a crime to join the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).
“But now, with the Anti-Terrorism Law, recruitment and membership will be punished,” he pointed out.
“Kaya parang it’s fair to say na baka may relation nga yung current red- tagging activities (Thus it may be fair to say that the current red-tagging activities is related to this),” he added.
Guevarra had expressed his support to the passage of a law against red-tagging.
“People have raised their voice against it so we might as well have one because the frequency of this act loosely called red-tagging has really become quite disturbing, if I may say,” he said.
At the moment, Guevarra pointed out, those involved in red-tagging can only be charged for other offenses.
Without the law, “complaints may revolve around defamation, coercion, unjust vexation, or violation of privacy laws, but not for an offense called ‘red-tagging,’” he said.
“If they want to prosecute people who do ‘red tagging’ then the appropriate legislation should be passed,” he stressed.
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