{"id":278964,"date":"2020-12-17T20:59:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T01:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=278964"},"modified":"2020-12-17T20:59:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T01:59:06","slug":"roque-shrugs-off-asean-parliamentarians-call-to-stop-red-tagging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/12\/17\/roque-shrugs-off-asean-parliamentarians-call-to-stop-red-tagging\/","title":{"rendered":"Roque shrugs off Asean parliamentarians’ call to stop red-tagging"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Roque said the view was only expressed by a \u201cvery small\u201d number of Asean parliamentarians. (PCOO photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Malaca\u00f1ang on Thursday shrugged off the call made by Southeast Asian parliamentarians on the Duterte administration to stop red-tagging Makabayan bloc lawmakers in the Philippines.<\/p>\n

\u201cHindi po sila<\/em>\u00a0(They are not) representative of the views of the overwhelming majority of parliamentarians. And because they\u2019re not, that\u2019s the view of a very few Asean parliamentarians and I don\u2019t think it deserves any attention,\u201d Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque in a Palace briefing.<\/p>\n

Charles Santiago, a Malaysian Member of Parliament (MP) and chair of the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) earlier described the red-tagging of Makabayan lawmakers as an attempt to silence political opposition and undermine democracy, and directly put people\u2019s lives at risk, particularly, those who oppose the government\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

Roque said the view was only expressed by a \u201cvery small\u201d number of Asean parliamentarians.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery, very small numbers of Asean parliamentarians said that, and because of this, that\u2019s part of their freedom of expression which probably they don\u2019t even have in their own respective states. We leave it at that. Let that be their views,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The APHR chief expressed his view amid Duterte and other government officials\u2019 continued linking of the House of Representatives\u2019 Makabayan bloc with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People\u2019s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF).<\/p>\n

In a taped speech last Nov. 30, Duterte denied red-tagging Makabayan lawmakers, insisting that he was “identifying” them as legal fronts.<\/p>\n

Duterte said the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is \u201cvery correct\u201d for identifying groups like Makabayan, Bayan, and Gabriela as \u201clegal fronts\u201d of the CPP-NPA-NDF who are part of a \u201cgrand conspiracy\u201d to overthrow government.<\/p>\n

\u201cItong mga<\/em>\u00a0legal fronts\u00a0ng komunista, lahat \u2018yan<\/em>\u00a0(These legal fronts of the communists. All of them) Makabayan, Bayan\u2026they are all legal fronts, Gabriela. We are not red-tagging you. We are identifying you as members in a grand conspiracy comprising all the legal fronts that you have organized headed by NDF tapos yung (then) New People\u2019s Army and Communist Party of the Philippines,\u201d Duterte said.<\/p>\n

Santiago warned that red-tagging has \u201cextremely violent consequences\u201d and noted that the fact that Duterte is leading the practice is \u201cinexcusable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe urgently call on President Duterte and the Philippine government to stop labeling directly-elected representatives as terrorists, and to effectively fulfill their mandates and freely express their opinions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The APHR is a collective of lawmakers from Southeast Asia working to improve human rights responses and justice in the region.<\/p>\n

APHR was founded in June 2013 to protect the human rights of the people of Asean. Specifically, it represents a regional response and approach to human rights concerns, utilizing the specific characteristics and abilities of parliamentarians and “influence persons” to advocate for the protection of people’s human rights throughout Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

The CPP-NPA-NDF is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2013 Malaca\u00f1ang on Thursday shrugged off the call made by Southeast Asian parliamentarians on the Duterte administration to stop red-tagging …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":267341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-azer-parrocha","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278965,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278964\/revisions\/278965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}