The recent school shooting incidents that happened at the San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, and at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University Junior High School less than two months later, resulted in deaths and injuries that prompted public debate over school safety, violent influence among youth, criminal liability, and access to firearms. Several government officials pointed to a lack of familial and school guidance, online exposure to violence, with some agencies even linking the incidents to “terror grooming.”
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) attempted to stretch the discussion on recent school shootings to radicalization, violent extremism, and “terror grooming” in educational institutions purporting that the incidents are prime examples of youth vulnerability towards violent influence and therefore manipulation into extremist ideologies is not far off. This claim is unsupported given that there are no clear connections of the incidents to “terror grooming.” In fact, evidence primarily point to access of firearms belonging to uniformed family relatives—one from a police officer in Tacloban and the other from a customs official in Zamboanga. The task force proceeds with its fallacious narrative, using the issue to endorse the passage of repressive preventive measures against alleged “terror grooming.” In particular, the legislation of Senate Bill (SB) 1366 also known as the “Terror Grooming Prevention Act of 2025” authored by Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, a declared fugitive evading an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for his involvement in the so-called “war on drugs” campaign. The Department of Education (DepEd) also sought collaboration with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) in monitoring possible “youth terrorist recruitment” in online spaces following the incidents.
It is without a doubt that the dangers posed to the youth by the consecutive school shootings in Tacloban and Zamboanga merits objective inquiries and discussions into violent influence, but an analysis on the government’s use of the label “terror grooming” and the approaches it seeks in combatting this reveal not only deeply flawed arguments but attempts to infringe on civil liberties and control thought.
Vilification of Ideology
The National Security Council’s (NSC) Philippine journal on National Security, “Target to Threat: The Psychology and Prevention of Terror Grooming,” defines terror grooming as the manipulation of individuals, particularly the exploitation of the marginalized sector’s vulnerabilities in order to embrace radical ideologies. Violent extremism on the other hand is referred to in the journal as beliefs that perceive violence is necessary for achieving a goal. It differentiates it with terrorism which focuses on carrying out criminal acts with an objective to instill fear.
The NTF-ELCAC and the National Security Council has popularized these terms often blurring progressive advocacy as terrorist acts. The use of these concepts in the NTF-ELCAC’s persecution of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) and its alleged fronts rely on faulty reasoning because armed struggle cannot be categorized as violent extremism nor can it be simplified as acts of terrorism. Armed struggle is rooted in the existence of social inequality and government inadequacy in addressing deep-seated multi-sectoral issues. It does not operate for mere intimidation and violence against civilians. In a 2018 Manila Court ruling on the proscription case against the CPP-NPA filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the court distinguished CPP-NPA’s rebellion from terrorism and found the organization’s armed struggle was a means and not the direct purpose for its creation thereby dismissing the case that attempted to label the CPP-NPA as terrorists.
Terror grooming is discussed in the journal as a scheme for recruitment. It does not acknowledge an individual’s own autonomy to become members of political, social, and religious movements that attempt to address sectoral issues and advocate policy change. This disregards individuals’ experiences of injustice and poverty and independent formulations of belief that drive people to political unrest and rebellion. By promoting the concept of terror grooming, the government purports that acts of resistance is spurred by manipulation and not by choice.
Even more dangerous is the installation of government interventions—criminalization being one of them—for a problem that has insufficient evidence for its existence and for imposed solutions that involve the strangulation of people’s rights and the surrender of independent thought. This narrative is most striking in SB 1366 which aims to legalize surveillance, censorship, and the criminalization of belief and even mentorship. Criticism and the flaws observed in the proposed measure is unmistakable evidence that the government’s treatment of “terror grooming” is to suppress human rights and to regard the marginalized sectors as passive, easily manipulated individuals ridding them of their own capacity for thought. The NTF-ELCAC has actively lobbied for SB 1366 and counterpart measures ignoring the fact that this constitutes discrimination and violates constitutional rights to freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of association and right to religion.
Violence Against People’s Campaigns
If the government succeeds in the legislation of a regulative measure on terror grooming it will add to the counter-insurgency lawfare—Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 whose misused implementation has paved the way for more intensified human rights violations in the country. The same can be said for Executive Order No. 70 which created the NTF-ELCAC, the main implementer of the government’s counter-insurgency programs and an inter-agency body under the executive branch. Through the creation of the NTF-ELCAC, the government has diverted taxpayer’s money for the repression of its own citizens.
Overbroad counter-terrorism laws paired with an unrestrained counter-insurgency task force have worked hand in hand as the government’s framework against dissent. Under the Marcos Jr. administration alone, Karapatan has monitored numerous violations to civil and political rights in relation to the government’s counter-insurgency programs. Karapatan has recorded 147 extrajudicial killings, 892 illegal or arbitrary arrests, 16 enforced disappearances, 580 forced or fake surrenders, 70,028 in indiscriminate firings, 59,284 in bombings, 49,489 in forced evacuations, and a staggering 11,302,433 in threats, harassment, and intimidation.
The country’s human rights situation contextualizes state propaganda on “terror grooming” as a targeted disinformation campaign. An evident pattern emerges in the repeated red-tagging sprees and the legal harassment of people’s protests. Cases of civil and political rights violations consistently occur as retaliation against individuals fighting for rights to land, labor and public services, justice, accountability and many more. Take for example the latest arrests of 13 individuals at the people’s anti-mining barricade in Barangay Pacquet, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya. The arrests stemmed from the community’s resistance to destructive mining projects by the North Luzon Mineral Resources Corporation (NLMRC). Harassment has been intensifying in the region following the community’s assertion to defend land, livelihood, and environment.
The government uses “terror grooming” as a trojan horse for fearmongering, feigning concern over allegedly vulnerably manipulated marginalized sectors, because it deems collective action and people’s movements as threats to the status quo.
Attack Against Critical Thinking
“Terror grooming” threatens academic freedom as the NTF-ELCAC attempts to invade the academic community. The consequences of framing activism as “terror grooming” is best exemplified when youth activist and philosophy student Raven Racelis challenged members of the NTF-ELCAC and the NSC at a forum the NSC co-organized with the UST Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Arts and Letters tackling the topic. Racelis questioned the red-tagging of activist organizations as terrorist groups as well as the task force’s claims on “terror grooming.” According to Racelis, the presentations of the speakers included photos of Kabataan Party-list and framed educational discussions as ideological grooming. In the same forum, Racelis was laughed at by speakers and called a communist by one audience member. Even after the forum ended, she continued to face widespread red-tagging and harassment from NTF-ELCAC’s online pages.
Racelis’ clash with the forum’s speakers is indicative of what to expect should the government continue its propaganda on “terror grooming.” Policing ideas, critical thinking, and belief only resorts in thought control—eventually programming minds to believe that diverging from the status quo is illegal behavior. Ironically, state propaganda dressed up as colloquiums and academic initiatives to deliberately exclude and target a group without further elaboration is manipulation and indoctrination of the masses. The same can be said for NSC’s Philippine journal on National Security which possessed clear bias and failed to objectively lay the groundwork on “terror grooming.” The research journal does not succeed in providing substantial evidence in proving the existence of terror grooming nor does it supplement the intense crackdown on thought it advocates for. Additionally, as the NSC boasts—it is the country’s first government-issued research journal on national security and yet it leads its discussion on “terror grooming” like an already established problem. Nearly half of its contents are not concerned with academic inquiry but instead reads like a compliance manual—instructing educational institutions and the media to intensely red-tag and conduct surveillance on individuals.
Among the problematic points posed by the Philippine journal on National Security is its discussion on civic participation among youth and the important role of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in developing this. In the study, the performance of HEIs in enhancing critical thinking was not measured for effectiveness nor did it examine the Philippine education curriculum’s efforts in promoting active citizenship to ground this. Moreover, it endorses “peaceful” and “school-authorized” student participation which are just fancy jargon meant to conceal student repression. This makes the illusion that students are allowed to participate in civic spaces and air out their concerns but only within school limitations. This can be conflicting for universities whose subject of protest involves their school administration or who have formed partnerships with questionable public officials, thus, allowing those in power to escape accountability.
Furthermore, the Philippine education system operates with a market-driven framework1 instead of operating for the benefit of a national industry and aimed at developing genuine patriotism. According to IBON Foundation, out of 825,594 college graduates only 152,379 were from productive industries like agriculture, fisheries, and manufacturing while a majority of 546,984 students finished with service-oriented degrees like business administration, education and health. Education has also suffered from curriculum reforms which effectively trimmed humanities like in the 2002 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) which compressed Geography, History, and Civics into “Makabayan” and at the High School level as “Social Studies” while the 2013 General Education Curriculum (GEC) excluded Filipino, Panitikan, and Philippine Government and Constitution in tertiary education. On top of this, is the postponed Reframed General Education Curriculum Component (RGECC) which threatens to reduce general education (GE) courses from 36 to 18 to adapt to the job market. It aims to remove subjects Understanding the Self, Contemporary World, Purposive Communication, Art Appreciation, Ethics, Readings in the Philippine History, Mathematics in the Modern World, and Science and Technology and Society as mandatory education requirements.
From a plethora of problems endured by the education sector like insufficient classrooms, learning materials, and salaries for teachers along with cross-cutting issues like poverty, hunger, environmental degradation and repression. It now has to face growing violent crimes committed by students. The government’s mere watering down of this issue’s roots to irresponsible teachers, online games, and “terror grooming” is a desperate escape from its own contribution to violent culture. The NTF-ELCAC being no stranger to brandishing guns and publishing gory images of killed rebels online, both the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) have held exhibitions of firearms within malls and universities, and government officials freely facilitating impunity and violence within the country.
These issues do not exist in a vacuum. The government is consciously maneuvering public clamor over school shootings for its own self-preservation; manufacturing a fearmongering propaganda to enable the passage of a law on “terror grooming” and manipulating the masses to be silent on its demands. Pressing issues on youth safety and education should not be treated with a clandestine attack on critical thinking and human rights. In fact, before the government can comment on school-related violence it should be made responsible over the violence it has brought unto communities, including educational institutions. The government must genuinely address people’s demands and not dismiss them as acts of terrorism. It is the government’s duty to cure systemic ills; this includes addressing the structural roots of poverty. “Terror grooming” belongs in the government’s arsenal against dissenters and a weaponized disinformation campaign cannot hide this truth.
Urgently, an objective investigation into the school shooting incidents must be undertaken, and not for the situation to be used as an opportunity by the government to suppress civil liberties. The government’s propaganda on terror grooming, including the legislation of SB 1366 should not be allowed to prosper. The Council for People’s Development and Governance calls for the repeal of the repressive twin terror laws Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 which has been abused to legally harass individuals for years. There should also be complete defunding of the NTF-ELCAC. Best if this should be abolished and public resources be reallocated to social services and meaningful development projects needed by communities. Most importantly, the government must pursue just and lasting peace through the resumption of peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) with the objective of addressing the roots of armed conflict.
A campaign on “terror grooming” cannot delegitimize social realities nor can it muffle mass movements. The government’s desperate and opportunistic attempts to advance institutionalized violence only breathes truth to the very thing it wants to suppress—a conscious and critical thinking nation.#
- In IBON Foundation’s “Reframed curriculum: A worrisome guide for market-ready and nation-blind Filipinos” (May 19, 2026), the Philippine education system is described as having a “market-oriented thrust” with learning centered on supplying job markets and the global value chain, this prioritizes producing laborers rather than enriching critical thinking and civic duty. ↩︎