LTCOL. Gerard Ace Pelare, spokesman for the regional director of police in Central Visayas, at a Cebu Press Freedom Week forum organized by the Cebu Citizens-Press Council, told the audience that the Philippine National Police (PNP) was not red-tagging anyone inasmuch as red-tagging was an invention of the national democratic movement. The people in the natdem organizations and anyone else who has embraced the term may use it to describe what they see as an unwelcome insinuation of association of some organizations and individuals with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army (CPP-NPA). The term may have entered public discourse, but it doesn't mean that the rest of us have to accept it or its premise. "Red-tagging" national democratic organizations is calling a spade a spade.
This, however, doesn't mean that every natdem activist is a Red fighter or communist terrorist, CPP-NPA and government terms, respectively. Or that once recruited into one of the countless legal, above-ground organizations one will eventually transit to an underground organization that is directly engaged in, or providing vital support to, the armed struggle.
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