Various groups and activists have denounced the Marcos Jr. government’s use of the anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering laws to justify intensified crackdowns on dissent. This comes after the exit of the reactionary government from the FATF ‘s (Financial Action Task Force) grey list, which lists down countries that have serious deficiencies in their anti-money laundering laws.
A few weeks back, a memo from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in La Union titled “Project Exit the Greylist,” suggested that the reactionary government’s efforts to meet FATF requirements included increasing trumped up terrorism financing cases. Rights advocates argue that this has been used as a pretext for repression, with at least one case against an activist cited in the leaked document.
In a statement on February 23, the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) criticized the FATF for congratulating the Philippines without acknowledging the “rampant misuse of counterterrorism financing laws to silence dissent and criminalize civil society.”
“The surge in fabricated terrorism financing cases, arbitrary asset freezes, and instances of financial exclusion are not ‘unintended consequences’ of compliance; they are deliberate tactics used to satisfy the FATF’s mandates at the cost of human rights,” the NUPL’s statement read.
They cited the use of counterterrorism financing (CFT) regulations to target grassroots movements while failing to address large-scale corruption, illicit financial flows and money laundering through Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs).
“The state’s eagerness to prosecute trumped-up charges of financing terrorism while ignoring financial crimes committed by politically connected elites exposes the hypocrisy of this so-called victory,” the NUPL said.
The latest targets of terrorism financing charges are five activists including peasant advocates Isabelo Adviento and Cita Managuelod, human rights worker Jackie Valencia, Makabayan-Cagayan Valley coordinator Agnes Mesina, and community journalist Deo Montesclaros. In a subpoena issued last January 10, the five were accused of supplying provisions to armed revolutionary groups in 2018. However, no sufficient evidence has been presented to support the allegations. According to Karapatan, at least 112 activists are now facing terrorism-related cases, all of which are based on weak or fabricated evidence.
Beyond targeting activists, critics point to the role of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) in red-tagging organizations and institutions, including constitutional bodies like the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). The NTF-Elcac has accused Comelec of harboring so-called communist sympathizers after the agency refused to disqualify progressive party-list groups from the upcoming 2025 mid-term elections.