Naga City issues new anti-red tagging ordinance with improved nuanced definition

The City Government of Naga in Camarines Sur has issued a new “Amended Anti-Red-Tagging Ordinance of Naga City,” Ordinance No. 2025-025, that mainly features an improved nuanced definition of red-tagging. The Ordinance was authored by City Councilors Jose B. Perez, Ghiel G. Rosales and Jessie R. Albeus, and enacted by the Sangguniang Panlungsod on March 18, 2025. It was subsequently approved by City Mayor Nelson S. Legacion on April 8, 2025.

Naga’s Amended Anti-Red-Tagging Ordinance defines red-tagging as “the malicious and/or unfounded publicly-made connection, linking or association of aboveground open and legal organizations and individuals as cohorts or partisans of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People’s Army (NPA) and/or the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), including but not limited to calling or labelling them as “reds,” “communists,” “(communist) terrorists,” “subversives,” or the like, especially or more so when done to silence, discourage or delegitimize their legitimate exercise of various constitutional freedoms, especially of political dissent, critical discourse and human rights advocacy, in ways or under circumstances that constitute threats to a person’s right to life, liberty or security, such as by intimidation, harassment and surveillance, on the part of State agents or civilian proxies of the State’s counter-insurgency efforts against the CPP-NPA-NDFP.”

In this definition, the mere publicly-made connection, linking or association of aboveground open and legal organizations and individuals as cohorts or partisans of the CPP-NPA-NDFP or its “front organizations,” or the labelling of them as “reds,” “communists,” “(communist) terrorists,” “subversives,” or the like, does not in itself constitute red-tagging. What makes it so are three crucial elements:

1. Most crucial, accompaniment by “threats to a person’s right to life, liberty or security,” including but not limited to “intimidation, harassment and surveillance”

2. Malicious purpose or motive to “silence,” “discourage” or “delegitimize” the legitimate exercise of various constitutional freedoms, especially of political dissent, critical discourse and human rights advocacy

3. Unfounded, “without showing any factual basis,” “not grounded in truth and facts”

These crucial elements are gleaned mainly from a close reading of the Supreme Court (SC) En Banc Decision in Deduro vs. Vinoya (G.R. No. 254753, July 6, 2023, uploaded May 7, 2024) characterizing red-tagging as an actionable wrong or violation of human rights to life, liberty and security, which practice “must end.”

As stated in the new Ordinance’s Explanatory Note, without these crucial elements, the act of publicly-made connection, etc. to the CPP-NPA-NDFP may in fact be one also in the legitimate exercise of various constitutional freedoms, rights and duties – like freedom of speech and of the press, the right to seek and duty to give public information, academic freedom, and truth-telling. Such as when made in the course of media opinion columns and broadcasts, academic works and discussions, and other truthful public information services whether governmental or non-governmental on the “important public interest” which is the local communist armed conflict. The warranted push-back against red-tagging should not result in a likewise “chilling effect” on the same constitutional rights and liberties that are meant to be protected by the criminalization of red-tagging.

The original “Anti-Red-Tagging Ordinance of Naga City,” Ordinance No. 2024-134, issued in November 2024, defined red-tagging as “the act of publicly labelling, vilifying, branding, naming, accusing, or caricaturing individuals, groups or organizations of being state enemies, subversives, armed rebels, communists, terrorists, recruiters, enablers, or fronts, thereof, implying or insinuating involvement or engagement in armed rebellion, acts of terrorism, or any felonious acts, without any official documentary basis.”

Only the last phrase “without any official documentary basis” pertains, but in a more limited scope, to red-tagging’s crucial element of “unfounded.” Absent are the two other crucial elements of (1) accompaniment by threats to personal security, and (2) the malicious purpose or intent of impeding or impairing constitutional rights and liberties. These two crucial elements are reflected in the SC Deduro Decision’s most important pronouncement on red-tagging that “Inherent in the practice of red-baiting is the use of threats and intimidation to discourage ‘subversive’ activities.” The latter refers to the legitimate exercise of constitutional rights and liberties, such as in the course of political dissent, critical discourse and human rights advocacy.

The original Ordinance’s definition of red-tagging is based, per its own Explanatory Note, on House Bill No. 1152 on “An Act Providing for the Criminalization of Red-Tagging,” introduced by Kabataan Party-List Rep. Raoul Danniel A. Manuel on July 5, 2022. This therefore does not factor in the more recent SC Deduro Decision released in 2024. The authors of the original Ordinance were City Councilor Albeus (now also a co-author of the New Ordinance) and then City Youth Councilor Kerwin Ardinazo.

The new Ordinance was proposed by recently retired RTC Naga City Judge Soliman M. Santos, Jr., himself a long-time practicing human rights lawyer and also a 2007 Naga City Mayoral Recognition awardee for Peace Advocacy. His proposed Amended Ordinance was finalized in consensus with the City Legal Officer Atty. McGyver Gerard S. Orbina.

Per its Explanatory Note, the Amended Anti-Red Tagging Ordinance of Naga City is its own human rights, justice and peace contribution to putting an end to the practice of red-tagging not only in Naga City. While the City Ordinance is enforceable only within the city limits, it may well serve as a positive example beyond its borders, especially for other local government units, if not also for Congress when it legislates a Republic Act defining and penalizing red-tagging.

At the end of its Explanatory Note, the Amended Anti-Red-Tagging Ordinance of Naga City is expressly stated to be built on the foundation of its traditions and history that include: the old Jardin, now Plaza Rizal, as the local freedom park version of London’s Hyde Park and Manila’s Plaza Miranda of free speech and public debate; the Naga press, especially during martial law, that was once “the freest in the Philippines;” the Naga Peace Zone, as declared in Sangguniang Panlungsod Resolution No. 92-169 so as to be off-limits to armed conflict; and the Naga City Justice Zone, the sixth in the country and launched on September 30, 2019.