'Look at the West Philippine Sea': Protests flare as Duterte targets 'state enemies' at University of the Philippines

Faculty members and students at the University of the Philippines (UP) erupted in protest on Tuesday after the country's Defence Secretary suddenly announced he was nullifying a 32-year-old agreement banning police and soldiers from entering any of the state institution's campuses without prior notice.

"With or without the agreement we will protect academic freedom in the university. We will fight for it no matter what happens," said Ferdinand Manegdeg, dean of the UP's College of Engineering, which has the largest portion of students of any college on all campuses.

One of the country's top-tier educational institutions, the 112-year-old university has long had a reputation for being a bastion of student activism. While the state-funded school has 32 branches nationwide, the most famous is the sprawling main campus in Diliman, Quezon City. In 1971, students protesting oil price hikes took over and set up a "Diliman Commune" that defied police and military encroachments for eight days.

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Under President Rodrigo Duterte, military officers as well as internet trolls have taken to painting UP as a hive of communist agents who "recruit" students to join the armed rebel New People's Army as political cadres.

Under President Rodrigo Duterte, military officers and internet trolls have painted the University of the Philippines as a hive of communist agents who "recruit" students to join the armed rebel New People's Army as political cadres. Photo: EPA-EFE alt=Under President Rodrigo Duterte, military officers and internet trolls have painted the University of the Philippines as a hive of communist agents who "recruit" students to join the armed rebel New People's Army as political cadres. Photo: EPA-EFE

Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the accord keeping police and the military out of the campus had become "obsolete" because "during the life of the agreement the University of the Philippines has become the breeding ground of intransigent individuals and groups whose extremist beliefs have inveigled students to join their ranks to fight against the government."

Manegdeg told This Week in Asia that whatever Lorenzana was accusing the university of engaging in, the accusations should first be proven in court.

"Communist thinking is not against the law," he said, stressing that he was voicing his opinion on the matter and not speaking for UP or his college. "Whether or not you are against the government should not be the reason for the military to come into the class. That is true for all universities, not just UP."

At the UP rally on Tuesday protesting the revocation of the agreement, UP president Danilo Concepcion told students that "many may not understand the importance of this accord", saying that it had made it possible for students and teachers to give free expression to spirited thinking and speech.

Students at the University of the Philippines defended their right to academic freedom. Photo: EPA-EFE alt=Students at the University of the Philippines defended their right to academic freedom. Photo: EPA-EFE

Concepcion said he had written to Lorenzana asking him to reconsider the move.

Manegdeg, who belongs to the UP Vanguard fraternity, whose members have undergone military training as army reservists, said he would eject any soldier attempting to come into his college if the soldier did not have a court order.

"Coming into my class and investigating my students or what I say in my class, that is not tolerated whether it is UP" or any other school, he said.

"The purpose of the military is to protect the country from external threat," he said, adding that it was not the mandate of academic institutions or professors to look for communist rebel recruiters on campus.

He said that the university maintains its own security force and that a police station sits at the edge of the campus.

Critics of the government fear the abrogation of the accord means military and police agents and personnel will freely enter the campus to infiltrate, intimidate and arrest any student deemed a suspect in the eyes of authorities.

Over the last few years, Duterte officials have indulged in an orgy of "red tagging" - naming a broad array of critics and accusing them of being communists. Many of those accused have been arrested, and a few have been shot dead by police or soldiers. Communism and the Communist Party of the Philippines are not banned in the country. However, a Manila court is hearing a case to declare the CPP and its armed wing a terrorist group.

In his statement, Lorenzana said he was "appealing to the UP community - let us work together to protect our students from extremism and destructive armed struggle.

"We are not your enemies. We are here to protect our people, especially our youth."

Under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who imposed martial law in 1972 that effectively lasted until Marcos fled the country in 1986, UP was a hotbed of student dissent. Military agents infiltrated the campus and some students were kidnapped, tortured and killed.

Vice-President Leni Robredo, a UP alumna, said in a statement that the abrogation was "not a practical gesture but a symbolic one, one designed to sow fear, one designed to discourage dissent, one designed to silence criticism".

Opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros said on Twitter that she denounced the "unilateral termination" of the accord, and she advised defence officials to look for communists elsewhere than at the university.

"If the administration is bent on looking for communists, they should focus on the communists blatantly intruding in the West Philippine Sea," she tweeted, taking a dig at the military's inability to defend against Chinese incursions into that portion of the South China Sea called the West Philippine Sea, which forms part of the country's territorial waters.

Etta Rosales, chair emeritus of the moderate left-wing Akbayan Citizens Action party, and a UP instructor who was arrested and tortured during the Marcos regime, said in a statement: "Secretary Lorenzana, the University of the Philippines and its students need no saving. Save and protect the West Philippine Sea instead. That is where the real and present threat is. If you can't protect our seas, don't lash out at the students and their university."

The Philippine government has been fighting the New People's Army since 1969. However, the NPA has known better days, and has been reduced to a shadow of the strength it had during the martial law era under Marcos.

But this has not stopped Duterte from painting the communists as a threat, and the insurgency has been used as an excuse to pass a draconian "anti-terror law" that is currently being contested in the Supreme Court.

While UP has produced a number of student activists and outright communists, its alumni also include Marcos, his martial law enforcer, Juan Ponce Enrile, the dictator's legal adviser, Estelito Mendoza, and former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whose term was marked by numerous corruption scandals.

Hermogenes Esperon, Duterte's national security adviser and a former UP student, once told This Week in Asia that he had been a member of a "radical" leftist youth group while at the university.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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