Parlade, NTF-ELCAC violating anti-terror law in surveilling without judicial order —Colmenares

Southern Luzon Commander Lieutenant General Antonio Parlade, Jr. and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) are violating the Anti-Terrorism Law of 2020 for admitting that Bayan Muna chair Neri Colmenares is already "under surveillance" when there is no judicial order yet.

This is according to Colmenares himself, who is one of the petitioners against the controversial law before the Supreme Court.

In an ANC interview on Monday, Colmenares pointed out that under the anti-terror law, any surveillance activity on suspects for terrorism must first have a judicial affirmation from a division of the Court of Appeals, referring to Section 16 of the act.

"So yun ang tanong ko ngayon kay Gen. Parlade. Wala pa namang special division of the Court of Appeals. Where did they ask the court order to conduct surveillance against people they want to proscribe?" he said.

"They're fishing kasi for evidence diyan. That's why we've always been saying kapag proscription comes in na, the critics will be the first ones to proscribe rather than the Abu Sayyaf, all these things," he added.

Parlade reportedly said on Sunday that Colmenares, apart from the Communist Party of the Philippines, is under surveillance by NTF-ELCAC. Parlade serves as spokesperson of the NTF-ELCAC.

Because of this, Colmenares is convinced that Parlade as well as NTF-ELCAC, are liable for violating the Anti-Terrorism Law which they supported themselves.

"They [are] conducting surveillance as a prelude to their proscription when there is no court order under Section 17 of the Anti-Terror Law which requires them, and in fact penalizes them any unauthorized surveillance of any form without judicial order, is liable for 10 years in prison," he said.

"This is really one more thing that we will raise before the Supreme Court that the supposed safeguards are not really in place because the military has admitted to violating them, surveillance without judicial order," Colmenares added.

In a separate interview on ANC, Parlade said there is nothing illegal about the "intelligence surveillance," adding the military has been conducting such operation in the West Philippine Sea and on suspected criminals even before the anti-terrorism law was passed.

"We've been doing surveillance even before this law," Parlade said. "That's part of the job of the intelligence."

For now, Colmenares said they are considering filing a case against Parlade the moment President Rodrigo Duterte's term ends in June 2022.

"The moment President Duterte's term ends, definitely there will be cases files against them because of what they did not just to me but other persons like the celebrities he red-tagged," he said.

"No matter his denial that they red-tagged them, he’s been doing that for so many years. So we're thinking of cases right, we're just considering under the present dispensation, it would be very difficult to file cases against them," he added.

Earlier, Parlade warned actress Liza Soberano regarding her support to Gabriela Women's Party, which the military claims is a front organization of communist rebels.

He said that if Soberano will not abdicate from the progressive group, she would "suffer the same fate" as Josephine Anne Lapira, a University of the Philippines student who was killed in a clash between the military and the New People's Army back in 2017. —KBK, GMA News