Don't give groomers free pass

May 22, 2025

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) welcomes the sincere intention of ML Partylist Rep. Leila de Lima to champion human rights and press freedom as she prepares to take her seat in the 20th Congress.

However, as we confront the evolving threats posed by communist terrorist groups, particularly the CPP-NPA-NDF, we respectfully caution the good Congresswoman to be wary that her good intentions to protect civil liberties do not end up shielding the networks responsible for the radicalization, grooming, and exploitation of children, students, women, and indigenous communities. It is a fact that terror recruitment and grooming in our country is carried out through so-called “legal democratic organizations” that operate in the open while serving the underground armed insurgency of the CPP-NPA-NDF. These are the very fronts that capitalize on the “red-tagging” narrative to evade scrutiny and accountability.

We thus urge Rep. De Lima and our legislators to prioritize laws that protect the Filipino people from recruitment into violent extremism, rather than inadvertently legalizing a cover for its machinery.

In this light, we look forward to the opportunity to engage Congress in crafting legislative measures that seek to criminalize organized recruitment, ideological grooming, and psychological manipulation of minors, students, women, and other vulnerable sectors into terrorist or insurgent activity.

Let us not forget our victimized youth, the latest of whom was Jhon Isidor 'Dee' Supelanas of Kabataan Partylist, who, like many before him, began as students, became spokespersons, and ended as casualties of the NPA. We cannot allow more lives to follow that same tragic arc.

The task force also hopes Congress will enact laws that institutionalize peace education and civic resilience in schools, while protecting campuses from infiltration by recruiters masquerading as activists. Such legislation would empower DepEd and CHED to develop integrated anti-terror-grooming modules and peacebuilding curriculum, and establish vetting mechanisms for student organizations under local peace and security councils. In this way, we promote values in their most impactful form--disiplina, malasakit, and civic awareness over dogma and deception.

Senator de Lima’s concern about red-tagging, if not tempered by evidence-based guardrails, risks turning into a smokescreen that benefits the architects of terrorism. Legislation must protect legitimate dissent, yes, but it must also prevent the systematic destruction of lives through ideological grooming.

We are ready to work with all lawmakers to craft laws that advance human rights without becoming blind to the rights of the victims of terrorism. Let us protect truth, not illusion. Let us protect the people, not their groomers and recruiters.

Undersecretary Ernesto C. Torres Jr.

Executive Director, National Secretariat

National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict