In the early hours of 22 March, unknown vandals defaced the signage and doors of two prominent Philippines bookstores, Popular Bookstore and Solidaridad, with red painted graffiti of ‘NPA’ and ‘terrorist’. NPA stands for New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Both bookstores are renowned for selling rare books written by progressive, nationalist and revolutionary authors, aside from mainstream books.

Geraldine Po, Popular Bookstore store manager, said that their selling of books written by CPP Founding Chairman Prof. Jose Maria Sison might be the reason behind the vandalism committed by “the usual suspects”. She said that the Duterte government’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and its allied groups might be behind the vandalism.

Ms. Po stressed that their customers and guests are “usually intellectuals” and added, “Reading books about communism will not make you a communist.” Aside from Prof. Sison’s books, they also sell books by former journalist Cecilio Arillo, whom Po described as a loyalist of the Marcos family.

The National Book Development Board condemned the twin incident. “We along with our friends and partners in the book publishing industry condemn in the strongest terms these vicious acts,” they said.

“We believe this is an attack on institutions of knowledge and harmful to the democratic values that we, along with the rest of the government, are bound by duty to protect,” the NBDB added.

Earlier from September 2021, the NTF-ELCAC has been ordering the removal of reading materials authored by Prof. Sison and those relating to the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines from the libraries of state universities.

Reacting to the censorship, the Book Development Association of the Philippines said, “The removal of books with sensitive or challenging content is a violation of freedom in publishing and freedom of thought and impedes critical thinking and empathy.” They stressed, “We need to remember that the goal of subversive literature is to encourage people to think for themselves, while having access to different perspectives and possible ideals.”

The bookstores are seen as the latest victims of government ‘red-tagging’: individuals and groups accused of having links with the CPP and NPA. Red-tagging victims become targets of threats, harassment and vilification by government security agents. Many among them have suffered trumped-up charges, prolonged detention and extrajudicial killing.