MANILA – The posters that appeared on campus were scary. They warned that the University of the Philippines has become a breeding ground for communist sympathizers and that students and teachers need to be on high alert for anti-government insurgents. Some students were even named as possible offenders.
No one knew where the posters came from, but they have been found on many of the university’s various campuses across the country in recent weeks, according to students and university activists. At the end of last month, the government decided to get involved.
To eliminate potential communists in the elite institution, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana announced the decision to end a 32-year deal that prohibited security forces from entering the campus and arresting individuals without first coordinating with university officials. Teachers and students can now be kept under suspicion.
About 200 students gathered at the university in Quezon City, a northern suburb of Manila, to protest the announcement. By allowing security forces to return to campus, they said, the government was targeting one of the few places in the Philippines where criticism of President Rodrigo Duterte was still tolerated. For them, the purpose of the new rule was clear: another crackdown on political freedom in a country where dissidents are usually marked and dispatched at any time.
“This is the people’s struggle,” said Angelo Marfil, one of the students camped outside the Quezon Hall building, for the protest. “An attack on academic institutions is an attack on all of us because they are trying to scare us,” he said.
Marfil, a 19-year-old political science student, sat cross-legged on the floor with a cup of coffee in his hands while pointing to a new art installation being built by university students. The installation – made up of bamboo, antique furniture and wallets – was designed to look like a barricade and to commemorate a 1971 student uprising at the school.
“This is a symbol 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 colored hair and indigenous clothing, Mr. Marfil joined many anti-government demonstrations in what he called a “parliament on the streets”, speaking out against government corruption and in support of the International Criminal Court Mr Duterte’s investigation into the mass murder of people suspected of being drug dealers and addicts, which the court called “crimes against humanity”.
The youngest of four brothers, he said that his brothers advised him to moderate his rhetoric, but that he decided to ignore his advice.
Cristina Chi, another student at the protest, agreed that it was not time to be silent and described the decision to annul the agreement as an act of intimidation. Chi, a 21-year-old communications student with plans to become a journalist, said she remembered listening to radio broadcasts of rallies and protests as a child and wished she could participate. After studying at the university for two years, she became even more passionate about the need for change.
The word “revolution” has become part of her daily speech, she said, but that does not mean that she should be labeled a violent insurgent.
“If any of the military learns of this and accuses me, my teacher or my colleagues of cultivating communist ideas, the absence of a deal will allow them to drag me out of class and arrest me on forged charges,” said Ms. Chi said adding that activists from progressive groups had already been targeted and that she feared that these raids would become the norm on campus.
“It is also an insult that they think we need protection from the Communists’ brainwashing, as if someone could just decide to join the armed struggle overnight,” she said. “I think it is dangerous and just factually incorrect to say that the university needs to force revolutionary ideas down students’ throats. In fact, it is being exposed to the bad conditions of public education that opens our eyes to become more radical, more critical ”.
The University of the Philippines has been an oasis of free speech, producing some of the country’s top minds. Its extensive green grounds, flanked by huge acacias, have witnessed important moments in modern Philippine history, including student protests that helped topple dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Marcos himself graduated from school.
In 1989, three years after a popular uprising ended Marcos’ brutal regime, the government agreed to keep security forces off campus. The decision was made after a university official, Donato Continente, was arrested at the school on suspicion of murdering Colonel James N. Rowe of the United States Army, who was a military adviser to the Philippine Armed Forces. Mr. Continente was eventually convicted, but maintained his innocence and claimed that he had been tortured to confess. He was released in 2005 after 14 years in prison.
At least 18 other universities, including four private institutions considered among Manila’s best schools, have been labeled by the military in recent weeks as “recruitment havens” for communists. The Philippines is one of the few places in the world with an active communist insurgency.
The military also recently published a list of 27 alumni from the University of the Philippines who claim to have become members of the New People’s Army, an insurgent group that aims to overthrow the government through 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 being withdrawn, forcing Lorenzana, the defense secretary, to issue an apology and fire an officer of intelligence.
Fidel Nemenzo, dean of the university’s main campus in Quezon City, declined to speculate on why the government suddenly canceled the deal that kept security forces off campus after serving the authorities and the university so well for three decades. But he noted that the move came a year after Duterte signed an anti-terrorism law that, according to activists, was created to suppress political dissent.
That law, which gave the military the power to detain suspects without a warrant for nearly a month, was signed by Duterte amid major street protests organized by groups affiliated with the university.
“Part of this campaign is the ‘red tag’ of institutions and individuals who criticize the government,” said Nemenzo. “Academic freedom – the freedom to think and speak – requires the absence of fear,” he added. “How can anyone speak openly if the military can enter the university without notice?”
While Nemenzo was sitting in his office, Youth Duterte, a right-wing group represented in Congress, tried to hold its own demonstration on campus, the day before the planned demonstration. Mr. Nemenzo encouraged them to disperse. There were reports of uniformed men in military vehicles on campus, he said.
After the group members undertook a brief program expressing their support for Mr. Duterte and Mr. Lorenzana, they left silently.