Anti-Subversion Act of 1957

Also known as: Republic Act No. 1700 · RA 1700 · Anti-Subversion Law · An Act to Outlaw the Communist Party of the Philippines and Similar Associations, Penalizing Membership Therein, and for Other Purposes

Government

Definition

The Anti-Subversion Act of 1957 is the short title of Republic Act No. 1700, “An Act to Outlaw the Communist Party of the Philippines and Similar Associations, Penalizing Membership Therein, and for Other Purposes,” approved by President Carlos P. Garcia on June 20, 1957. Section 2 of the Act declared the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) “an organized conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the Republic of the Philippines for the purpose of establishing in the Philippines a totalitarian regime and place the Government under the control and domination of an alien power,” and outlawed “the said party and any other organization having the same purpose and their successors.” Section 3 defined the CPP to include the party “and its military arm, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan, formerly known as HUKBALAHAPS, and any successors of such organizations” — language under which the later CPP, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front were prosecuted as successors. (LawPhil — RA 1700, Wikipedia — Anti-Subversion Act of 1957)

The Act’s criminal core was membership itself: under Section 4, whoever “knowingly, willfully and by overt acts affiliates himself with, becomes or remains a member” of the CPP, a successor, or any subversive association suffered arresto mayor plus permanent disqualification from public office and from voting, escalating to prision correctional on a second conviction and prision mayor thereafter; officers, ranking leaders, and members who took up arms against the Government faced prision mayor to death; and conspiracy to overthrow the Government “for the purpose of placing such Government… under the control and domination of any alien power” carried prision correctional to prision mayor. The Act was repealed in 1992 by Republic Act No. 7636, approved September 24, 1992, which decriminalized membership in the CPP while leaving the Revised Penal Code’s sedition and rebellion provisions intact. (LawPhil — RA 1700, LawPhil — RA 7636, PNA — Anti-subversion law revival to cause Reds’ natural death)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	Anti-Subversion Act of 1957
Wikidata	Anti-Subversion Act of 1957 (Q104870037)
DBpedia	N/A (DBpedia unreachable this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Subversive activities — Law and legislation
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Anti-Subversion Act Republic Act 1700 Philippines 1957 outlawry Communist Party repeal RA 7636
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Republic Act No. 1700
RA 1700
Anti-Subversion Law
An Act to Outlaw the Communist Party of the Philippines and Similar Associations, Penalizing Membership Therein, and for Other Purposes

Examples and Analogies

Guilt by card-carrying: unlike the Revised Penal Code, which punishes acts of rebellion or sedition, RA 1700 punished the status of belonging — the legal equivalent of criminalizing membership in a club whose objects the state had declared criminal, with overt affiliation as the actus reus. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
A statutory exit door: Section 8 gave members thirty days from approval to renounce membership “in writing and under oath” before a mayor, governor, or other oath officer — an amnesty valve that exempted renouncers from the Act’s penal sanctions, though not from liability for crimes already committed. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Cold War kinship: the Act is the Philippine counterpart of the United States’ Communist Control Act of 1954, which likewise legislated against the party as an organization rather than against individual criminal acts. (Wikipedia — Anti-Subversion Act of 1957)
Verified statutory data:
Short title: “Anti-Subversion Act” (Section 1) (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Approval: June 20, 1957, by President Carlos P. Garcia, during the 3rd Congress (LawPhil — RA 1700, PNA — Anti-subversion law revival)
Outlawed: the CPP, its military arm the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (formerly the Hukbalahap), any similar-purpose organizations, and their successors (Sections 2–3) (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Penalties: mere member — arresto mayor plus permanent disqualification from office and suffrage; second conviction — prision correctional; later convictions — prision mayor; officers/ranking leaders or armed members — prision mayor to death; alien members deported after sentence (Section 4) (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Procedural safeguards: prosecution only on a fiscal’s sworn certification after preliminary investigation; two-witness rule for capital-level convictions (Sections 5, 7) (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Savings clause: nothing in the Act to be read as restricting “freedom of thought, of assembly and of association for purposes not contrary to law” (Section 9) (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Repeal: RA 7636, approved September 24, 1992, repealing RA 1700 “as revived by Executive Order No. 167 and subsequently amended by Executive Order No. 276” (LawPhil — RA 7636)

Usage Scenarios

1. Prosecuting Party Members

Between 1957 and 1992 the Act served as the statutory basis for arresting and prosecuting CPP members and members of its listed successors; the corpus of this site records the archetype in the person of Huk leader Casto Alejandrino, arrested in Malabon on October 21, 1960 under the Anti-Subversion Law and imprisoned until 1975 — fifteen years of custody of a man whose armed struggle had already formally ended. (LawPhil — RA 1700, Wikipedia — Anti-Subversion Act of 1957)

2. Escaping the Ban by Renunciation

In the Act’s first month, members could file written, sworn renunciations before municipal or city mayors, provincial governors, or authorized oath officers; Section 8 exempted them from the Act’s penal sanctions while preserving liability for earlier crimes — a one-time valve the statute never reopened. (LawPhil — RA 1700)

3. Superseding and Reviving the Act

Presidential issuements repeatedly rewrote the ban: Marcos’s Presidential Decree No. 885 (1976) and PD 1835 (1981) expanded subversion to cover affiliation with any foreign-assisted overthrow movement, effectively superseding RA 1700; President Corazon Aquino’s Executive Order No. 167 (1987) repealed the Marcos decrees and revived RA 1700, later amended by EO 276 — the chain RA 7636 itself cites in its repealing clause. (PNA — Anti-subversion law revival, LawPhil — RA 7636)

4. Repealing the Act for Peace Talks

RA 7636, signed by President Fidel V. Ramos in September 1992, removed subversion from the criminal code as the government opened peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front — as Ramos put it, “By assuring communist insurgents of political space, we also challenge them to compete under our constitutional system”; subversion ceased to be an offense while sedition remained a crime. (LawPhil — RA 7636, Rappler — Proposed anti-subversion law a ‘repressive weapon’)

5. Citing the Act in Later Debates

The repealed statute remains a reference point in Philippine security debates: in 2019 Interior Secretary Eduardo Año proposed reviving the Anti-Subversion Act to help end the communist rebellion, drawing on the Act’s memory as an anti-communist instrument and criticism that a revived law would become “a repressive weapon” against dissent. (PNA — Anti-subversion law revival, Rappler — Proposed anti-subversion law a ‘repressive weapon’)

Strategies

Attack the organization, not only the acts: by outlawing the party itself and making membership the offense, Congress aimed at the structure of the movement rather than at individually provable crimes — the strategy that also drew the Act’s harshest criticism. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Escalating penalties for recidivism and rank: the penalty ladder (arresto mayor, then prision correctional, then prision mayor; prision mayor to death for leaders and armed members) targeted leadership most heavily while punishing rank-and-file affiliation progressively. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
A renunciation window as decompression: Section 8’s thirty-day oath mechanism sought to shrink the organization at the statute’s birth without prosecuting every adherent. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Due-process packaging: the fiscal-investigation requirement, the two-witness rule for capital cases, and the Section 9 savings clause dressed a drastic measure in procedural legality — provisions its challengers nonetheless found insufficient. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Decriminalization as peace policy: the 1992 repeal treated membership as political rather than criminal, shifting the contest to the constitutional arena while keeping rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy crimes on the books. (LawPhil — RA 7636, Rappler — Proposed anti-subversion law a ‘repressive weapon’)

Security and Safety Measures

Prosecutorial gatekeeping: no information could be filed unless a city or provincial fiscal (or a designated special prosecutor) had investigated, found a prima facie case, and certified it under oath, with the accused entitled to counsel, testimony, process, and cross-examination; courts of first instance conducted the preliminary investigation in capital cases. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Heightened proof for capital penalties: conviction of offenses punished by prision mayor to death required “the testimony of at least two witnesses to the same overt act or on confession of the accused in open court.” (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Perjury guard: knowingly furnishing false evidence in any action under the Act was itself punished by prision correctional. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Alien offenders: convicted aliens were to be deported immediately after serving sentence — removal of foreign actors treated as a security measure. (LawPhil — RA 1700)
Constitutional savings clause and eventual repeal: Section 9 disclaimed any restriction of lawful thought, assembly, and association, and RA 7636 finally removed the membership offense — the state’s ultimate safety valve against the Act’s civil-liberties costs. (LawPhil — RA 1700, LawPhil — RA 7636)

Historical Context

RA 1700 was a Cold War measure born of the Hukbalahap rebellion. The 1930 party (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas) and its military arm, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan — the successor of the wartime Hukbalahap — were in open revolt when the 3rd Congress passed the Act, and the statute recited that the CPP’s existence posed “a clear, present and grave danger to the security of the Philippines.” Signed by President Garcia on June 20, 1957, it stood for two decades as the republic’s central anti-communist instrument; this site’s entry on the 3rd Congress places it among the era’s statutes (RA 1180, RA 1199, RA 1400) as the legal face of the state’s answer to the insurgency. (LawPhil — RA 1700, PNA — Anti-subversion law revival)

Under Martial law the Act was superseded by harsher decrees — PD 885 (1976) and PD 1835 (1981), which made mere attendance at subversive meetings criminal — until the post-EDSA government of Corazon Aquino repealed those decrees and revived RA 1700 through Executive Order No. 167 (1987), later amended by EO 276. The revived Act was short-lived: President Fidel V. Ramos signed RA 7636 on September 24, 1992, repealing the Anti-Subversion Act outright as peace talks with the National Democratic Front began, so that subversion ceased to be a crime while sedition remained punishable. The Act’s afterlife has been rhetorical: the 2019 revival proposal of Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, backed by the Philippine National Police as a complement to Executive Order 70’s whole-of-nation approach, was answered by law groups and rights advocates who called the original statute’s logic unconstitutional and warned it would be turned against dissent — a debate the repealed law still anchors. (PNA — Anti-subversion law revival, LawPhil — RA 7636, Rappler — Proposed anti-subversion law a ‘repressive weapon’, Wikipedia — Anti-Subversion Act of 1957)

Challenges and Controversies

The Constitutionality of Criminalizing Membership

From enactment to repeal, the Act’s core contention was whether belonging can be a crime: critics held that punishing knowing membership by “overt acts” of affiliation punished association and belief themselves, in tension with the constitutional guarantees Section 9 invoked; defenders answered that a party defined by statute as an armed conspiracy to place the Philippines “under the control and domination of an alien power” was not an association the freedom of association protected. (LawPhil — RA 1700)

Enforcement Against Individuals

The Act’s principal documented use was against movement figures rather than battlefield capture — the 1960 arrest and 1960–1975 imprisonment of Casto Alejandrino under RA 1700, recorded in this site’s entry on him, is the standing example of a prison term measured in years for membership long after organized rebellion had ended; no PKP leader was formally executed under the Act’s capital provision. (Wikipedia — Anti-Subversion Act of 1957)

Dictatorial Expansion and Democratic Repeal

The Marcos decrees that built on the Act — PD 885 and PD 1835, criminalizing attendance and affiliation broadly — demonstrated to later critics how readily a membership offense expands into an instrument of dictatorship; the 1987 revival and the 1992 repeal marked the democratic system’s two-stage retreat from that logic. (PNA — Anti-subversion law revival, LawPhil — RA 7636)

The Revival Debate of 2019

When Interior Secretary Año proposed restoring the Anti-Subversion Act, the Manananggol Laban sa EJK called the proposal “unconstitutional, discriminatory, and contradictory to the democratic process,” warning that a revived law “becomes a repressive weapon” when critics are labeled NPA supporters and that it “practically destroys the peace process”; the PNP supported revival as complementing Executive Order 70. The proposal did not become law, and the Act remains repealed — cited in this entry only as current status. (Rappler — Proposed anti-subversion law a ‘repressive weapon’, PNA — Anti-subversion law revival)