Part One …
It is the duty of the Australian government to protect the citizens of this country. It is hardly necessary to even make that point, especially in a country that prides itself on being democratic.
In past years there have been two, related, events in which I and others were involved, that raise the question: is the government protecting our rights in dealing with agents of foreign states?
Picture of Antonio Parlade Jr. on his office with nameplate. Wikipedia Commons
In February 2020 Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr. of the Armed Forces of the Philippines led a military delegation to Australia in order to malign a number of individuals and legal civil society organizations (CSO), including Migrante Australia and Gabriela Australia. He claimed that the targets of his invective were “supporters, financiers of Communist Terror Groups” in the Philippines. Such comments are called “red-tagging” in the Philippines. They are often followed by the assassination of those red tagged. It is widely believed that those murders have been committed by state forces or hard core Duterte “vigilantes”. There is systemic impunity for such killings.
General Parlade’s role in this form of repression is crucial. As a prominent spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF -ELCAC), he has been the Red Tagger-in-Chief, in the Philippines and overseas.
The General made his claims in Canberra at a meeting with officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). He then repeated the red tagging in two community meetings in Melbourne and Campbelltown, near Sydney. The meetings were organized by Philippine consular officials. Invitations were sent out to a select group of individuals and community associations.
Ostensibly the meetings were to inform Filipino-Australians about the “Peace Process” that had been a part of the Duterte Presidential campaign agenda in 2016. But according to participants’ statements, those meetings were not about bringing peace. For almost the entire meeting, using Power Point slides, General Parlade lashed out, red-tagging a number of Australian citizens who have been critical of Duterte’s drug war, the extra judicial killings (EJK) and other policies and programs of the Duterte government. They have also been critical of Duterte’s discontinuation of the actual peace process in which negotiators had made considerable progress.
The General also red tagged the CSOs who are doing humanitarian work with Filipinos who have come to Australia and have had difficulties living here. Those same CSOs were accused of funding the New People’s Army! This is ludicrous. But also dangerous for members of those organizations. First, these organizations operate within the laws of Australia. Their funds are. monitored. Second, they operate on a shoestring budget. Third, the Philippine government has claimed for decades that the NPA funds itself by imposing “revolutionary taxes” on corporate entities such as mining and plantation companies.
Perhaps most concerning was the warning made by General Parlade to the communities. Do not associate with any of the red-tagged individuals nor with members of the CSOs named. There was little doubt that an unspoken threat accompanied the warning.
The second event was a virtual Zoom meeting on 11 February 2021. Some attendees have labelled it “Parlade 2.0”. Invitations from the Philippine Embassy went out the previous day to selected individuals and Filipino-Australian community associations across the country. No one else was allowed to attend. Attendees report that there was little opportunity for discussion. For several hours they were subjected to a stream of “military propaganda” from a Filipino Army officer.
Once again there was red-tagging, this time almost entirely aimed at the CSOs. That tactical change seems to be a response to the great pressure the Duterte government was under internationally. It faced possible prosecution by the International Criminal Court. It had been heavily criticised by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In June 2020 the UN Human Rights Office released the damning Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. (See a summary https://news. un.org/en/story/2020/06/1067462} )
In September 2020 the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) took note of the abhorrent record of human rights violations under the Duterte government. Many hundreds have been killed across most sectors of civil society, including human and environmental rights defenders, peasants, indigenous people and their leaders, educators, trade unionists, religious leaders, lawyers, journalists and doctors. All of these killings were done with almost total impunity.
Disappointingly, and surely naively, UNHRC recommended only that the Philippine government should receive technical assistance to deal with the array of human rights violations and the systemic failure to bring culprits to justice.
Much of the pressure on the regime results from the impact of solidarity work by support groups around the globe, including many overseas Filipino CSOs and community associations. They expose the truth about the drug war, aka the “war on the poor”, in which tens of thousands have been executed without legal process. They continue to expose, criticise and demonstrate against EJKs and other human rights violations including corporate devastation of the environment in the Philippines.
The daily fare for activists, government critics, and ordinary folks such as Indigenous people who live on land wanted by mining and plantation companies, is to face harassment, threats, trumped up charges and assassination. Of course, people resist such actions by state forces. The government introduced a draconian Anti-Terror Act to try to strengthen its hold on power and weaken this resistance. The Act increases the capacity to arrest and detain those seen as “enemies” of the government.
Red-tagging is part of the government’s new strategy for silencing and destroying democratic resistance to its aggressive assault on human rights.
Red- tagging in Australia creates real dangers to Australians, and to their relatives in the Philippines. Those who were red-tagged by General Parlade and his colleagues have a justifiable concern for their safety. Indeed, some known activists and CSOs here have already been defamed and threatened, mostly online.
What is the attitude of the Australian government? It appears that they value the relationship with the murderous Duterte regime more than the safety of its citizens
In response to a Freedom of Information request to DFAT seeking to know precisely what General Parlade and his crew had presented to DFAT officials, DFAT/FOI refused to provide the requested documents because they were “exempt” on grounds that to release them would be a “breach of confidence” and could “harm Australia’s international relationships”. The refusal is under “Internal Review” by DFAT.
That an Australian government agency prefers to keep secret the details of its conversation with a foreign military delegation in which the reputations of Australian citizens and that of legal organizations have been falsely impugned, is unjust, an abdication of the government’s duty to protect. There are limits to what can be considered “in confidence”. The rights of citizens should be protected, not traded off for the sake of good relations with a murderous regime.
Gill H. Boehringer is Former Dean, now Honorary Professor at Macquarie University Law School, Sydney, Australia. He received his BSocS, from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University (1955); an LLB from Hastings College of Law, University of California (1962) and an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London(1967).
To make matters worse, according to the few lines in the non-exempt FOI documents, DFAT welcomed the red tagging and happily agreed to cooperate with the Philippines, encouraging Parlade to supply more such information.
Worse still, the agency has done nothing to engage with those red-tagged to learn their side of the damaging and dangerous narrative peddled by General Parlade and those who spoke on the virtual forum recently. Nor have they taken steps to stop the Philippine military from continuing to put the lives and reputations of Australians in danger through these community meetings deceptively billed as opportunities to learn about a “peace process” that no longer exists, having been replaced by a campaign of repression.
The Australian government needs to do better.
Gill H. Boehringer
Republished: BATINGAW Issue 53, Jan-Feb 2021, pp 4–5
