THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers condemned the arrest of a school principal in Samar and denounced what it called the “worsening attacks on the education sector.”

Nestor Balando Ada was arrested on January 28 in his sleeping quarters at the Rosario National High School in Northern Samar.

Ada, 55, was reportedly arrested based on a search warrant for alleged possession of firearms and explosives.

ACT said that Ada, also a pastor of the New Life Born Again Christian Church, informed his colleagues last year that he was under police surveillance.

“The Duterte government’s insane and overreaching war against counter-insurgency and the Anti-Terror Law has dangerously emboldened the state forces to circumvent the rule of law and wantonly attack human rights for their end of silencing dissent,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said in a statement.

Basilio noted that the ATL’s adverse impact on the education sector is now on full display, with the government’s “rabid and indiscriminate red-tagging” of universities, educators and students, and with education workers now falling victim to the “sick modus operandi of using search warrant to plant evidence and make arrests.”

“Mr. Ada is a known education and religious leader, a unionist and champion of teachers’ rights and welfare. Everyone who knows him cannot but think that the charges against him are fabricated. This is clearly meant to harass our members and send teachers the chilling message of what can happen to them if they dare fight for their rights. It is the state forces who are guilty of terrorism,” he added.

Basilio said that Ada’s arrest adds to the many compelling reasons why ACT and the education sector is calling for the immediate junking of the Anti-Terror Law and the dismantling of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

“To date, we have 8 leaders, members and ordinary teachers who have been slapped with trumped-up charges for their union work or simply airing out their criticisms against the government, and about 50 cases of harassment and threats, not to mention the thousands of our members who have been subjected to police profiling. This madness has to stop, our teachers who already bear the brunt of government’s neglect of education amid the pandemic do not deserve these tyrannical attacks,” Basilio stressed.

Basilio called on the Department of Education to defend Ada.