MANILA – The posters that appeared on campus were terrifying. They warned that the University of the Philippines had become a breeding ground for communist sympathizers and that students and professors should be on the lookout for insurgents against the government. Some students were even listed as possible offenders.
No one knew where the posters came from, but students and college activists say they have been found on many of the university’s various campuses across the country in recent weeks. At the end of last month, the government decided to participate.
To wipe out possible communists at the elite institution, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana announced a decision to end a 32-year agreement that prohibited security forces from entering campus and arresting individuals without first consulting with university officials. Professors and students can now be detained on suspicion.
About 200 students gathered at university in Manila’s northern suburb of Quezon City to protest the announcement. By allowing security forces back onto campus, they said, the government had targeted one of the few places in the Philippines where criticism of President Rodrigo Duterte was still tolerated. To them, the purpose of the new rule was clear: another crackdown on political freedom in a country where dissidents are often tagged and dispatched in the blink of an eye.
“This is the people’s struggle,” said Angelo Marfil, one of the students camped in front of the building, Quezon Hall, before the protest. “An attack on academic institutions is an attack on all of us because they try to scare us,” he said.
Mr. Marfil, a 19-year-old political science major, sat cross-legged on the floor with a cup of coffee in his hands as he pointed to a new art installation being built by college students. The installation – consisting of bamboo, old furniture and desks – was designed to look like a barricade and commemorate a student uprising in 1971 at the school.
“That is symbolic of our protest,” he said. “President Duterte’s government has openly declared war on us.”
Like other students at the protest, some of whom wore colorful hair and indigenous clothes, Mr. Marfil has joined many anti-government demonstrations in what he called the ‘Parliament of the Streets’, in which he stands against corruption in government and in support of the International Criminal Court. investigation into Mr Duterte for the mass murder of people suspected of being drug dealers and addicts, which the court has called “crimes against humanity”.
The youngest of four brothers, he said that his siblings had advised him to tone down his rhetoric, but he had decided to ignore their advice.
Cristina Chi, another student at the sit-in protest, agreed it was no time to shut up and described the decision to quash the accord as an act of intimidation. Ms. Chi, a 21-year-old communications student with plans to become a journalist, said that as a child she remembered listening to radio broadcasts of rallies and protests and wished she could participate. After two years of studying at university, it is even more passionate about the need for change.
The word “revolution” has become part of her daily speech, she said, but that didn’t mean she should be branded a violent insurgent.
“If one of the military hears about this and accuses me, my professor or my classmates of fostering communist ideas, the absence of an agreement will drag me out of the classroom and arrest me on trumped-up charges,” Ms. Chi said, adding adding that activists in progressive groups were already targeted and that she feared such raids would become the norm on campus.
“It is also insulting that they think we need protection from communist brainwashing, as if someone could just decide to join the armed struggle overnight,” she said. “I think it is dangerous and factually incorrect to say that the university should force revolutionary ideas down the throats of students. In any case, it is exposed to the dire conditions of state education that open our eyes to become more radical and critical. “
The University of the Philippines has long been an oasis of freedom of speech and has produced some of the best minds in the country. The expansive green grounds, lined with huge acacia trees, have witnessed important moments in modern Philippine history, including the student protests that helped overthrow the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Mr. Marcos himself was a graduate of the school.
In 1989, three years after a popular uprising ended the brutal Marcos regime, the government agreed to ban security forces from the campus. The decision was made after a college employee, Donato Continente, was arrested at the school on suspicion of murdering US Army Colonel James N. Rowe, who was a military adviser to the Philippine Armed Forces. Mr. Continente was eventually convicted, but he maintained his innocence, claiming that he had been tortured to make a confession. He was released in 2005 after 14 years in prison.
At least 18 other universities, including four private institutions ranked among the best schools in Manila, have been labeled by the military as ‘recruiting havens’ for communists in recent weeks. The Philippines is one of the few places in the world where there is an active communist uprising.
The military also recently published a list of 27 alumni at the University of the Philippines who it said had joined the New People’s Army, an insurgent group seeking to overthrow the government in armed conflict. The list, which included the names of prominent journalists and a former government official, was published on a government social media account before it was removed, forcing Mr. Lorenzana, the defense secretary, to apologize and call an intelligence official. fire.
Fidel Nemenzo, chancellor at the university’s main campus in Quezon City, did not want to speculate as to why the government had suddenly canceled the agreement to keep the security forces out of campus, after having served both the authorities and the university for three decades. had served. But he noted that the move came a year after Mr. Duterte signed an anti-terrorism law that activists say was intended to quell political disagreements.
That law, which gave the military the power to detain suspects without warrant for nearly a month, was signed by Mr. Duterte amid large street protests organized by groups affiliated with the university.
“Part of this campaign is the ‘red marking’ of institutions and individuals who criticize the government,” said Mr Nemenzo. “Academic freedom – the freedom to think and speak – requires the absence of fear,” he added. “How can anyone speak up if the military can enter the university unannounced?”
While Mr. Nemenzo sat in his office, the Duterte Youth, a right-wing group represented in Congress, tried to hold its own meeting on campus a day before the scheduled sit-in. Mr. Nemenzo encouraged them to disperse. There had been reports of men in uniform in military vehicles on campus, he said.
After the members of the group held a short program in which they expressed their support for Mr. Duterte and Mr. Lorenzana, they quietly left.