The National Task Force to End Local Communist Conflict (NTF-Elcac) has urged a United Nations special rapporteur to hear the testimonies of former rebels after she flagged the use of counterterrorism laws to prosecute journalists and human rights advocates.
NTF-Elcac executive director Ernesto Torres said Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, should also speak with former members and combatants of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) to gain a ‘comprehensive understanding’ of insurgency in the Philippines.
‘Far from being abstractions in a policy debate, they are Filipinos who lived inside the movement. They understood its structures, carried out its political and organizational work, and later chose to leave because they saw, firsthand, the deception, coercion, violence, and exploitation that sustained it,’ Torres said in a statement on Tuesday.
‘If the international community is serious about human rights, then the testimonies of those who suffered inside the CPP-NPA-NDF system must be heard with the same seriousness given to those who accuse the State,’ he added.
According to Torres, Khan and all international watchdogs examining the counterinsurgency policies of the government should also listen ‘with an open mind’ to former members of underground mass organizations, former student and youth organizers, former combatants, indigenous peoples’ leaders, grieving parents, and their communities.
‘Their stories are essential to any honest and comprehensive understanding of the insurgency, especially in grasping how the CPP-NPA-NDF continues to use legal and democratic spaces to agitate, organize, and recruit marginalized and vulnerable communities toward armed violence,’ he said. In her 18-page final report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this month, Khan noted that Philippine laws have been ‘weaponized’ against rights advocates and press freedom, citing the case of Tacloban-based journalist Frenchie Mae who has been detained since 2020.
‘In the Philippines, ‘terrorism financing’ laws have been used against many journalists and human rights defenders, in one case dragging out legal proceedings for five years on dubious evidence while the journalist languished in pretrial detention and eventually received a disproportionately severe punishment,’ Khan said.
Meanwhile, Torres said law enforcement against ‘terrorism financing, recruitment, exploitation of minors, extortion, and material support to armed violence’ is not a weaponization of the law.
‘It is the duty of a democratic State to protect its people. It only becomes a weapon when law is used without evidence, without due process, and without accountability,’ he said.
Khan received 347 complaints alleging violations of human rights, according to her 2025 report.
Of the 27 allegedly murdered, at least eight were red-tagged before the killing, the same report said.
NTF-Elcac, meanwhile, has logged 50 alleged killings of former rebels and civilians linked to alleged ‘spy-tagging’ by CPP-NPA-NDF across the country, Torres said.
‘We do not wish to silence dissent, but we do wish to draw the line between legitimate criticism and the exploitation of grievances to justify violence,’ Torres said.
‘The Philippines can protect press freedom and human rights while also protecting communities from terrorism, recruitment, and exploitation,’ he added.