June 19,2020
Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy has gone way too far in her red-baiting and vilification activities by accusing one of the living pillars of Philippine activism, Sr. Mary John Mananzan, of aiding and abetting rape, pillage, mass murders, and other horrific crimes.
In her Facebook post on June 17, Badoy said Mananzan was an official of an alleged terrorist organization who “aided and abetted” the following: “rape, pillage, plunder, economic sabotage, mass murders, the destruction of our culture, the unabated blood bath of our indigenous peoples, the burning of schools, the recruitment of our children into the terrorist fold.”
She also accused the 80-year old nun of putting forth “the godless and vicious ideology — communism”, “sowing division and hate” and of using the “hurtful language of hate and intolerance.”
Badoy’s hysterical red-tagging to demonize the activist nun was in response to Mananzan’s earlier post calling out Judge Rainelda Montesa for her guilty verdict of cyber libel on journalists Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos, Jr.
Such wild and baseless accusations coming from an undersecretary and official of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) not only defames Sr. Mary John’s person and reputation but puts her life and liberty in peril. Precedents are aplenty: human rights defenders and social activists first being name-called as “communist terrorists” by government officials and thereafer being illegally arrested and charged with trumped up crimes or worse, being victims of extrajudicial killings.
Under the new Anti-Terrorism Act awaiting Pres. Duterte’s signature, such accusations can result in Mananzan’s designation as a suspected “terrorist” subject to 24-hour surveillance, warrantless arrest and detention without charges of up to 24 days, and a host of other violations of her rights and liberties.
Mananzan is only the latest in a long list of activists and Duterte critics red-tagged by Badoy and the agencies she works with. We demand a public apology from Badoy retracting and correcting her condemnable Facebook post. We demand that the PCOO, NTF-ELCAC, AFP and PNP stop their vicious, malicious and dangerous red-tagging activities. There will be consequences should Badoy and her ilk persist in their unconscionable conduct.#
