DEFEND UP
Last night, details regarding the unilateral termination of the UP-DND Accord, an agreement signed in 1989 by the University of the Philippines and the Department of National Defense, was released to the public. Today, amid the challenges posed by the pandemic, students, teachers, and individuals from different sectors convened in UP Diliman to protest against the thinly-veiled assault on the ideals of honor, excellence, and academic freedom that the university had long preserved.
The accord was born from the cries of student activists. After the unlawful arrest of Philippine Collegian staffer Donato Continente within the premises of the university, the accord was approved expediently — symbolizing the commitment of the UP community in preserving it as a safe and secure space for all. This victory has since served as one of the cornerstones of academic freedom in the university.
It was agreed that before entering the premises of any UP campus, state security forces must notify the administration beforehand. It is a safeguard designed to protect students from military intimidation as well as to ensure that intellectual discussion will remain free from the clutches of repression. It was also stipulated that UP administrators are to be informed of any search or arrest warrant on any student, faculty, or employee of the university.
The letter addressed to UP President Danilo Concepcion specifies that the grounds for its termination was to provide “effective security, safety, and welfare” for the students, faculty, and employees of the university. However, this claim has been disproven countless times. Last year, the bilateral agreement was violated by the police when they entered the campus of UP Cebu to illegally detain students peacefully protesting the passage of the Anti-Terror Law. In 2017, students from UP Mindanao denounced militarization when the AFP petitioned 20 hectares of land from the campus to make space for the military’s Reserved Officer Training Corps (ROTC) grounds. In 2006, UP Diliman student-activists Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan, were abducted by military forces led by then Major General Jovito Palparan. 12 years later, Palparan and two other military officials were found guilty of kidnapping and serious illegal detention. Although the military men involved were sentenced to 40 years in prison, Empeño and Cadapan are still yet to be found. If these occurrences proved anything, it is that the military and police are the true instigators of violence within and outside of the university.
The university takes pride in being the stronghold of critical and progressive thinking and it has withstood attacks from countless administrations. This stunt is clearly no different from the past attempts to stifle dissent from the university. Critical thinking and intellectual debates should be encouraged without the fear of censorship in order to have an education that embodies academic freedom. Committing this brazen act of democratic backsliding erases all forms of proper dissent and sends the nation into the same dictatorship it vowed to never repeat, never again.
Through baseless accusations of red-tagging, state security forces have constantly made threats to the lives of our fellow students, faculty, and staff — yet now they ask for our trust?
Let it be known that the UP community will not stand idle in the face of repression. As lingkod-bayan, we must defend the freedoms countless students before us have fought hard for. No act of fascism will undermine the promise of us, iskolar ng bayan, to exhaust all means possible to serve the people.
