On Jeffrey Celiz’s asylum bid: there is no refuge from accountability
There must be no sanctuary for lies and no refuge from accountability.
April 22, 2025
NUPL
The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers is a nationwide voluntary association of human rights lawyers in the Philippines, committed to the defense, protection, and promotion of human rights, especially of the poor and the oppressed.
Photo courtesy of Teddy Casiño

We join activist organizations and human rights advocates in condemning Jeffrey Celiz’s attempt to seek asylum.

Celiz is not a dissident seeking refuge from political persecution. By his own record, he is a military asset and paid propagandist attempting to evade accountability for years of systematic red-tagging, disinformation, and public vilification of activists and rights defenders. Now, confronted with legal reckoning, he recasts himself as the persecuted, insulting those who have been harassed or imprisoned, and dishonoring the memory of those who were disappeared or killed for real acts of dissent.

Celiz is currently in the United States while facing two civil suits for damages filed by Dr. Carol Araullo, chairperson emeritus of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), and Teddy Casiño, BAYAN chair and former Bayan Muna Party-list representative. These cases, pending before the Regional Trial Courts of Quezon City and Makati, respectively, seek to hold him to account for deliberate, baseless, and malicious red-tagging—an act that, in this country, carries consequences far beyond reputational harm.

In a separate civil action, the Quezon City RTC Branch 306 ordered Celiz and former NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Lorraine Badoy to pay P2.07 million in damages to journalist Atom Araullo. The court held that their actions violated provisions of the Civil Code protecting individual rights, personal dignity and human relations. The court was unequivocal: “Red-tagging is, by itself, a manifestation of bad faith. By engaging in red-tagging, the defendants acted grossly and recklessly without regard for truth.”

Freedom of expression is not a shield for impunity. While the Constitution upholds this right, the Civil Code provides clear limits: when speech is used to harm, defame, or intimidate others, it becomes actionable. What Celiz practiced was not public discourse in a democracy; it was vilification as state policy. His speech did not inform and debate—it incited and endangered.

Asylum, in international law, is a shield for the persecuted, not a hiding place for the persecutors. If Celiz now fears reprisal, it is not for having spoken truth to power, but for years of trying to silence those who did.

There must be no sanctuary for lies and no refuge from accountability. ###

Reference:

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla
NUPL Secretary General
+639174316396

Photo by Bulatlat

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