“MALACAÑANG AND PNP’s statements are pathetic and ridiculously wrong on so many levels. They were already caught red-handed but futilely attempts to deny or lighten the implications of their illegal activity. They even misinterpreted a threedecade old video of Prof. Jose Maria Sison in a desperate bid to red-tag ACT.”
Thus, declared Raymond Basilio, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines secretarygeneral, of the attempts of the police and the Palace to justify profiling members of the organization.
First denying any profiling operations, both PNP and presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo later claimed there was nothing wrong with the police action as ACT is a “communist front” that – they claimed – was admitted by Sison himself.
“The regime contradicts itself when it tried to brush off the weight of the profiling operations as being procedural, only to red-tag ACT later, as what this dissent-intolerant regime does to all its critics. This exposes their real agenda, which is to single out and suppress us on the basis of our criticisms against the anti-teacher policies of the regime, primarily the inflationary TRAIN Law and Pres. Duterte’s three-year unfulfilled promise of salary increase for teachers,” said Basilio.
Noting: “Their statements are very telling of how this regime disregards the basic human rights and civil liberties of the teachers and the people which are guaranteed by the Philippine Constitution and a host of laws such as the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers and the Data Privacy Act of 2012.”
Assured Basilio, ACT’s activities are “well-within the bounds of the law such as organizing teachers’ unions, engaging in collective negotiations for teachers’ rights and welfare, and championing nationalist and pro-people advocacies through education, public information, and mass actions which are well-within our right to free expression and assembly.”
“It is the state forces who engage in illegal activities with the profiling that they are doing against us,” he said.
Taking the cudgel for ACT, the Commission on Human Rights reminded the police that: “As part of their sworn duty to serve and protect, the police must acknowledge and recognize that the mere act of profiling already prejudices and discriminates against the members of the concerned groups, which is a blatant violation of the basic right to equal protection of the law.”
Punto! stands with ACT. Profiling is a violation of our right to privacy. It is a tool of tyranny.
