European and North American diplomats have favorably compared the son and namesake of the late Martial Law dictator to former president Rodrigo Duterte, whose fake drug war killed tens of thousands of Filipinos.
But these partners of the Philippine government and many civil society organizations here should study the survey of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) and Center for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) on the rise of terror financing cases in the country.
The 129 non-profit civil society organizations facing government sanctions collectively provide aid to millions of poor Filipinos in the areas of human rights, the environment, sustainable agriculture and fisheries, disaster relief, and the defense of indigenous lands and waters.
They now find themselves in the crosshairs of what the NUPL calls “weaponization of terror laws” as the Marcos government scrambles to get out of the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “Grey List.”
The FATF list includes countries with heavy money-laundering problems. The Philippines definitely fits that category.
Investigations in the Senate and the House of Representatives have unearthed massive money-laundering by foreign nationals. Masquerading as Filipinos, they snapped up huge tracts of land and built complexes with cash transfers worth hundreds of million up to billions of pesos from 2016 to 2023.
Playbooks of repression
Duterte started using Republic Act No. 10168 (the 2012 Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act) against legal organizations opposing his bloody drug war and big-ticket projects on indigenous lands.
Among the first targets was the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), an interreligious organization of priests and laypeople helping farmers, fishermen, and indigenous people.
Why did the RMP become a target? Because it was helping indigenous communities, especially in Mindanao, and Duterte wanted to open up these areas for plantations and extractive industries.
Assaults against rights defenders continue under Marcos, with 119 activists killed and at least 225 arrested. As courts post-Duterte started dismissing greater numbers of trumped-up cases against rights defenders, the number of enforced disappearances grew, with 14 recorded from July 2022 to December 2024.
The same pattern is found in the filing of terrorism financing cases by the Marcos government.
The cases target even those organizations that have passed the stringent auditing standards of Philippine government agency partners and foreign states.
Simply put, when trumped-up criminal charges don’t prosper in court, the government turns to anti-terror laws that hobble the defense due to the lack of transparency.
Human Rights Watch describes the current situation as “terror-tagging” by a government that claims it has halted the practice of red-tagging. But the NUPL-CPDG report also notes that 62% of affected civil service organizations experienced widespread red- tagging, and 57% reported surveillance and other forms of physical harassment.
Kids’ gloves for fat cats
Three-fourths of the non-governmental organizations targeted have annual budgets of below ₱5 million (US$ 85,500).
The hammering experienced by these groups presents a stark contrast to how cybercrime hub operators and suspected drug lords operated for years with little notice from the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
The proceeds from crime, including untrammeled traffic in narcotics while law enforcers killed tens of thousands of poor citizens, allowed them to construct vast complexes to house trafficked foreign nationals engaged in global cyber scams affecting countries from Europe to Asia.
Dismissed Bamban mayor Alice Guo built a crime hub worth ₱7 billion ($17 million).
The AMLC ignored the transfer of more than ₱100 million from a family firm to the cyber hub firm over just two days in 2020.
Guo continued operating even after the escape of trafficked workers in 2020 and a raid in 2023.
Raids in 2024 exposed the secrets of the Bamban cybercrime hub and its links with the gang operating a similar complex in Porac, Pampanga. But it took senators to bring out data on crime-fueled movement of funds.
It’s not an exaggeration to trace the scrutiny of drug lords and cybercrime hubs to the rift between Marcos and the Duterte clan.
Remember, Marcos sought the blessing of self-proclaimed son of god Apollo Quiboloy during his 2022 campaign. This, even as a United States federal grand jury indicted the Davao religious leader and several associates in 2021 for sex trafficking, fraud, coercion, and money laundering.
Flimsy cases
At least 22 terror financing cases have been dismissed for lack of merit.
Among these: the terror financing case filed against Southern Luzon activists Fritz Jay Labiano and Adrian Paul Tagle after they gave ₱500 to detained environmental and indigenous rights advocates, including one who was eventually acquitted of terrorism charges.
Following its report, the NUPL asked the FATF to include in its review the injury cases by governments that twist its recommendations for political persecution. It also urged the task force to make the review process transparent and inclusive, and to reverse the harmful consequences caused by its recommendations.
Any effort to curb crime must never be at the expense of fundamental freedoms and human rights. That is the harsh lesson of the Duterte years. – Rappler.com