Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro on Thursday, Jan. 19, denounced the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) for conducting “red-tagging orientations” in schools because these “condition the minds of the youth” into thinking that dissent and criticisms of the government are illegal.

In a statement, the lawmaker stressed that schools must be “zones of peace” as protected under the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Order 32, Series of 2019 or the National Policy Framework on Learners and Schools as Zones of Peace and DepEd Order 40, Series of 2012, or the Child Protection Policy.

"Red-tagging, harassment, and threats have no place in schools. The NTF-ELCAC orientation on the so-called 'Communist Terrorist Group Youth' contains vilification, red-tagging, and terror tagging of progressive individuals and organizations targeting students, teachers, and education support personnel,” she said.

“These lectures of the NTF-ELCAC are attempts to condition the minds of the youth into thinking that activities protected by free speech such as voicing out dissent and critiques to the anti-people policies of the government are wrong and illegal, discouraging them to practice critical thinking," Castro added.

The solon, a member of the Congress’ Makabayan bloc, called on school administrators to protect the rights of the students and teachers.

"Schools are zones of peace and red-tagging orientations in schools must stop. We call administrators of schools to stand for the rights of their students and teachers by ensuring that schools are not launching pads for the military and military objectives," she said.

Her statement noted that the most recent orientation was held at the Philippine Science High School CAR campus where the NTF-ELCAC “forced” Grades 11 and 12 students to attend their orientations.

"To force Grades 11 and 12 students to attend these orientations and disturb their classes should not be allowed,” Castro lamented.

Amid the current “education crisis” in the country, which highlights the need to address the lapses in the curriculum, the lawmaker said the red-tagging orientations merely teach students how to bully their fellow Filipinos for exercising their right to freedom of speech.

"Tinuturuan natin ang mga kabataan na ang pambubully ay masama pero pinapayagan nating makapasok at magsagawa ng (We teach the youth thar bullying is bad but we are allowing the) red-tagging orientation ang mga tulad ng (of the) NTF-ELCAC na walang ibang layunin kundi mambully ng kapwa Pilipino na buhay at kabuhayan ng kaniyang mga biktima ang nakasalalay (whose objective is to bully their fellow Filipinos whose lives and livelihoods of their victims are put to risk),” she said.

She also lambasted the NTF-ELCAC, which was created in 2018 by Executive Order 70, signed by then-president Rodrigo Duterte, for accusing educators of brainwashing the youth or tagging them as terrorists “for simply doing their job to encourage curiosity, furthering human knowledge using critical thinking, and passing on learnings from history with the benefit of context, hindsight and guided analysis.”

"With the NTF-ELCAC orientations in schools, who now sounds like teaching, and which one sounds like brainwashing? Who are they to lecture in schools and 'teach' the children what is wrong and who is 'bad' when all they have done is kill thousands of innocent lives and violate the basic human rights of those they are supposed to serve and protect?,” Castro asked.