“Red-tagging” as a threat to people’s life, liberty, and security is the focus of “Bloom Where You Are Planted” by Nonilon Abao which is one of the ten competing full length films in the 21st 21st Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival.
The synopsis of the film states: “The Cagayan Valley Region in the Philippines serves as the dedicated workplace of Agnes Tadeo Mesina (a development worker), the chosen home of Amanda Echanis (a jailed mother-artist-activist), and the birthplace of Randy Malayo (a slain peace consultant). Yet, they find themselves unable to return home: one is relentlessly pursued by the government, another is imprisoned, and the third is killed on his journey home.
The paths taken by these three activists will be explored including the pit stops, obstacles, detours, and the long road ahead in the journey towards rebuilding a home with the people of Cagayan – a place that they work together to shape, and also shape who they are. Amid all these, the film explores their disrupted connections to home and celebrates their enduring resilience in the face of adversity.”
I first met Malayao when we were both campus journalists as members of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) where he was elected in 1991 vice president for Visayas. He was from UP Visayas who took to his tasks like fish in the water, recruiting the most number of member publications in the entire history of the Guild in the Visayas during his term. He continued his activism through grassroots organizing.
In 2008, he was imprisoned for over four years under the Arroyo administration on murder charges for the death of former congressman and governor Rodolfo Aquinaldo.
After his release on 2012. Malayao championed human rights in Cagayan Valley and helped farmers. He also took an active role in peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
Malayao was brutally murdered in the early morning of January 30, 2019 on his way home to Isabela. The bus had stopped over in Aritao, Nueva Vizcaya when two unidentified men boarded and shot Randy while he was asleep.
Makabayan-Cagayan Valley Coordinator Mesina was arrested on February 2022 in Aparri, Cagayan allegedly for murder charges which was already dismissed. Along with four other activists, she was earlier slapped with other bogus charges of accusing them of providing supplies to the New People’s Army in 2018.
It was in the early 1990s when I worked with Mesina as a volunteer for their group Katribu which is the national alliance of Indigenous Peoples organizations in the Philippines.
36 year-old Echanis is a peasant woman organizer under AMIHAN Cagayan provincial chapter, She was illegally arrested on December 2, 2020 along with her month-old baby in a government raid bannered under a counter-insurgency campaign.
Despite her detention at the Cagayan Provincial Jail, she is running for honors in UP Diliman, and topped the recent council elections.
The film exemplified the pronouncement of the Supreme Court in Deduro v. Maj. Gen. Vinoya (G.R. No. 254753, July 4, 2023) that “red-tagging is a threat to people’s life, liberty, and security”
Labelling a person “red” often comes with frequent surveillance, direct harassment, and in some instances, eventual death.
The Court stressed that being associated with communists makes a red-tagged person a target of vigilantes, paramilitary groups or even state agents. It also noted that red-tagging uses threats and intimidation to discourage “subversive activities.”
In his concurring opinion. my UP Law professor and SC Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said that red tagging is used by the military and paramilitary units to silence or cause untold human rights abuses on vocal dissenters.
Aside from government agents’ resort to stereotyping or caricaturing individuals, Leonen noted that this is accomplished by providing witnesses who, under coercive and intimidating conditions, identify the leaders of organizations critical of the administration as masterminds of ordinary criminal acts.
Not only does this make these leaders’ lives and liberties vulnerable, Justice Leonen stressed that a chilling effect on dissent is also generated among similar-minded individuals.
Cinemalaya will run from October 3 to 12, 2025 in Shangrila Edsa.
(Peyups is the moniker of the University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the Seafarers’ Division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan Law Offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09175025808)