THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers condemned the Department of the Interior and Local Government for tagging the group as a communist group in a recent memorandum.

“The memo flagrantly tramples on teachers and education workers’ constitutionally protected freedom to associate, and makes us open targets of worse state attacks, such as the massacre and illegal arrest of several activists in what is now known as the #STBloodySunday, shamelessly claimed by the PNP as a legitimate operation against so-called CTGs,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary-general, said in a statement.

He was referring to the memorandum issued by the DILG on  March 10, 2021.

The group demanded the immediate recall of the DILG memorandum. It also called on the Department of Education to protect the rights of its employees.

“We encourage all local government officials who advocate the cause of education to speak up against the baseless terror-tagging of public school teachers who serve their constituencies,” Basilio said.

“Such brazen attacks on our organization, however, will not deter our just fight for the youth’s right to education and for education workers’ rights and freedoms, nor will such gross violation be left unchallenged. Those behind the unrelenting attacks on ACT will be held to account,” he added.

Basilio noted that since President Rodrigo Duterte issued Executive Order 70 in 2018, ACT had been tagged as a terror group and some of the group’s leaders and members had been either red-tagged, harassed or arrested.

“None proved to be successful in silencing our legitimate dissent, especially as the education crisis exponentially worsened amid the government’s failure to resolve the pandemic that forced us into the inaccessible and ineffective distance learning,” Basilio said.

Being the sole and exclusive negotiating agent of public school teachers in 5 regions and having duly-registered unions in 12 others, Basilio said ACT has not only been in continuous working relations with the DepEd but with numerous local government units in addressing teachers’ and education’s issues and concerns.

“ACT has been at the forefront of the fight for safe, accessible, and quality education and the fight for a meaningful salary increase and benefits for education workers, both in the public and private sector. Why that qualifies us as ‘terrorists’ in the eyes of the Duterte government only they can answer,” he added.