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Chilling Effect: Sen. Risa Hontiveros takes on the anguish and emotional toll celebrities Liza Soberano, Catriona Gray and Angel Locsin are undergoing after being allegedly red-tagged for expressing their critical stand on several issues, which she said, also “caused a chilling effect on citizens who only want to weigh in on issues of national importance and hold government to account for its failures to the people.” Hontiveros, during the hybrid hearing of the Committee on National Defense & Security, Peace, Unification and Reconciliation Tuesday, November 3, 2020, on red-tagging of celebrities, personalities, institutions and organizations, also pointed out that the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict has been allocated P19 billion under the proposed 2021 national budget, which is more than the proposed budget of the Department of Housing, Settlement and Urban Development (P633 million); Office of the Ombudsman (P3.2 billion); Department of Budget and Management (P1.9 billion); and Department of Finance (P17.46 billion). “I will not hesitate to speak against the violations of the NPA, as I have done. But I will not sit idly by in the face of red-tagging and scare tactics by uniformed agents of the state, especially when they are perpetrated against ordinary civilians, including women, and especially when there is a bigger enemy that is not being confronted,” Hontiveros said, referring to the bigger threat of China’s move to seize the Philippines by force. (Screen grab/Senate PRIB)