THE NATIONAL Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict  on Wednesday said that 38 other universities allegedly serve as “recruitment havens” for communist rebels.

Undersecretary Lorraine Marie Badoy, spokesperson of NTF-ELCAC, said she fully supports the claim of Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade who identified 18 schools where the New People’s Army allegedly recruits students.

“Lt. Gen. Parlade merely gave words to the lived tragedy of an unbearable number of Filipino families who have lost their children to this terrorist organization and how an unaccounted number of these children died as NPA combatants after joining CPP/NPA/NDF fronts like Gabriela ACT, Bayan Muna, CEGP, Karapatan, NUPL, NUJP, IBON, LFS, Anakbayan, Student Christian Movement of the Philippines, Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, Alliance of Health Workers, Katribu, etc,” Badoy said in a statement.

She said the other 38 schools are in the same rank as the University of the Philippines. These were Bulacan State University, Tarlac State University, Holy Angel University, West Visayas State University and Batangas State University.

Badoy stressed that there is no such thing as red-tagging.

“Red-tagging is a myth created by the CPP/NPA/NDF to protect its fronts from being unmasked because those masks perform an important goal for them: they give the terrorist organization the cover it needs as they go about snatching our children from us, destroying our country and installing communism in our country,” she said.

Student groups, however, denounced Badoy’s claims, saying such baseless accusations put the lives of people at risk.

“The Nexus, the official student publication of the School of Arts and Sciences, strongly denounces the baseless accusation of NTF-ELCAC classifying other institutions including HAU as one of the fostering haven of NPA recruitment. We firmly uphold that this is an orchestrated maneuver of red-tagging not solely to students but of the entire Angelite Community — thus bestows seeds of terror and trepidation, a modus operandi of silencing dissent,” the student publication said.

College Editors of the Philippines Cebu said that red-tagging endangers the lives of journalists and activists. It added that the budget for the NTF-ELCAC is “a waste of taxpayer’s money, which could have been realigned for social services.”

National Union of Students of the Philippines Spokesperson John Dilag said that as long as the government continuously harass the youth, students will also continue “to desire for a government that is for the people and fight back against the murderous regime the Philippines currently have.”