MANILA, Philippines — IBON Foundation Inc. on Monday filed an administrative complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman against Duterte administration officials for red-tagging the research group.
The respondents in IBON’s complaint were Southern Luzon Command chief Major General Antonio Parlade Jr., Presidential Communications and Operations Office Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy and National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon.
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“IBON is asking the Ombudsman to hold respondents Parlade, Badoy and Esperon answerable for their malicious abuse of authority and negligent performance of duties as public officials,” the group said.
“IBON is also asking that they be punished for conduct that is grossly disregardful of the public interest, unprofessional, unjust and insincere, politically biased, unresponsive to the public, distorting nationalism and patriotism, and undemocratic,” it added.
IBON said it filed the complaint in response to “a year of constant vilification,” including Badoy’s remarks calling the research group, which sought to debunk the data that PCOO presented for their “Duterte Legacy” campaign, a communist front during a recent television interview.
Parlade spent the first week of February in Australia calling out IBON for supposed terrorist financing, the group said. Meanwhile, Esperon named IBON as among the non-government organizations supported by the Belgian government that “act as legal fronts for the CPP-NPA.”
“IBON maintains that it is nothing more than a SEC-registered foundation that publishes its socio-political-economic analysis for all the public to see,” the group said.
“Red-tagging has already been the death knell for far too many, with 293 activists already extrajudicially killed by suspected State forces,” it added.
Membership in or support of a national democratic activist organization is not equivalent to affiliation with the communist movement.
Although the government uses the term "communist terrorist," a petition with a Manila court to declare the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army as terrorist groups is still pending.