On Thursday, December 12, broadcast journalist Atom Araullo won a civil suit against Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) hosts Jeffrey Celiz and Lorraine Badoy, who accused Araullo and his mother of involvement with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), an act also known as red-tagging. The win is historic, being the first application of the Supreme Court’s decision that defined red-tagging as a form of harassment and intimidation, and a threat to life, liberty, and security.
From August 2022 to January 2024, Celiz and Badoy, the former National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) spokesperson, linked Araullo and his mother — Bagong Alyansang Makabayan chair emeritus Carol Pagaduan Araullo — to the CPP, the New People’s Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF). After the hosts aired these accusations on SMNI’s social media accounts and television channel, Araullo filed a lawsuit on September 11, 2023.
The Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 306 ruled that Celiz and Badoy have to pay Araullo P2.08 million in damages and lawyers’ fees.
A win for journalists
In her 27-page ruling, Judge Dolly-Rose Bolante Prado said, “The right to free speech is not absolute; it imposes limitations on its exercise to ensure that it will not infringe upon the rights of others. It does not protect defamatory statements.” Furthermore, the QC RTC found that Celiz and Badoy’s claims were “aimed at damaging the plaintiff’s reputation and credibility, both as a person and as a journalist by associating him with the CPP-NPA-NDF without proof.”
As no law penalizes red-tagging, Araullo’s case may set a precedent for similar civil suits in the future. The journalist took to Facebook following the ruling. “This case opens up a legal option for anyone who has been a victim of red-tagging and harmful disinformation, particularly journalists,” he said in a post. “I hope it gives courage to others who have a similar experience too. It is not okay to be attacked or harassed simply for doing our jobs.”
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) expressed its support for Araullo in a statement, calling the win a “moral victory and vindication.” The union said, “More broadly, this case also shows how one can seek redress for defamation without resorting to criminal libel, an archaic and anachronistic law that has been often used to silence critical reporting, criticism and dissent.”
Meanwhile, Badoy seeks to appeal the lower court’s decision. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports her sending a message to the media saying, “To be clear, I am not paying [P2 million] at this point [because] this is under appeal.” She also stated that she had lost the case only because her earlier lawyer, Attorney Mark Tolentin, did not submit a pre-trial brief on time. “In other words, we didn’t lose this case because Carol Araullo is not a member of the CPP-NPA-NDF,” she said. “I lost this case on a mere technicality.”
Red-tagging since the Duterte administration
The Zarate vs Aquino III case in 2015 involved members of progressive partylists and religious organizations petitioning for writs of amparo and habeas data against high-ranking government and military officials who’d tagged them as “communist front organizations.”
In his dissenting opinion of the case, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen quoted a 2011 journal article on red-baiting in the Philippines, defining red-tagging as “the act of labelling, branding, naming and accusing individuals and/or organizations of being left-leaning, subversives, communists or terrorists (used as) a strategy … by State agents, particularly law enforcement agencies and the military, against those perceived to be ‘threats’ or ‘enemies of the State’.”
In December 2020, former Bayan Muna Representative Carlos Zarate, who was at the forefront of the Zarate vs Aquino III case, found himself in another red-tagging issue, this time under the Duterte administration, characterized by its robust crackdown on dissenters and critics. In July that same year, former President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Anti-Terror Law of 2020, which was opposed by other politicians, celebrities, activists, local and international human rights organizations, religious organizations, and 50 US Congress members.
The Anti-Terrorism Law, which replaced the Human Security Act of 2007, allows for the warrantless arrest of suspects for 14 to 24 days, and for surveillance from 60 to 90 days. Under the law, people wrongfully detained and accused will only be remunerated if they file a suit against the government. Previously, the Human Security Act required that the police agency or Anti-Terrorism Council would automatically be charged to compensate for the wrongfully detained person.
At the beginning of the Marcos administration, Former National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos said that the administration was not keen on red-tagging. “Let’s put our energy on operational aspects of really rooting, looking at the roots of insurgency, yung lack of opportunity, yung injustice na hindi naa-address,” she told GMA News.
In May 2024, Human Rights Watch, an international non-government organization, called on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to abolish the NTF-ELCAC, which was established in 2018 under Duterte’s presidency and has become notorious for red-tagging. Marcos, however, rejected this call, saying, “Wala namang dahilan kung bakit natin tatanggalin ‘yan.”
