UP Diliman student council urges Lorenzana to restore DND pact with university
MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines Diliman student council called on Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana to restore the agreement that keeps out the military from its campuses without prior notice.
The student council also urged the Department of National Defense “to ensure that its elements, especially members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, will cease from red-tagging members of the UP community and take concrete steps to hold accountable those who have red-tagged members of the community.”
In a statement released Thursday, the student leaders joined the strong opposing to Lorenzana’s scrapping of the 1989 UP-DND accord and the linking of UP community members to communist rebels.
STATEMENT OF THE UP DILIMAN UNIVERSITY COUNCIL ON THE UNILATERAL ABROGATION OF THE 1989 UP-DND AGREEMENT We, members...
Posted by UP Diliman on Thursday, February 11, 2021
“The termination of the Agreement, along with the branding of UP faculty, students and staff as ‘enemies of the state,’ poses a significant threat to academic freedom, a constitutionally protected right enshrined in the UP Charter (Republic Act 9500),” they added.
Lorenzana unilaterally scrapped the decades-old accord in January, citing unfound claims that the university has long been a breeding ground of the armed communist movement — an allegation long denied by UP.
READ: What prompted the signing of the UP-DND accord in 1989?
Since the abrogation, the Armed Forces of the Philippines had published then deleted a list of supposed UP graduates who have joined the New People’s Army and were killed or captured. The military was sorry for the “gaffe” and vowed investigation, but questions remain.
READ: CHR: Errors in government list of supposed communist rebels dangerous | Red-tagged lawyer says questions still remain on military's erroneous list
Earlier this month, the defense chief met with university officials to discuss the abrogation. UP Public Affairs Chief Elena Pernia said that UP President Danilo Concepcion explained the sentiments of the university. “In our view, it was abrupt and Secretary Lorenzana realized too that maybe there should have been discussions first,” she said in Filipino in a February 4 interview.
Academic freedom cultivates environment that produced nation-builders
The UP Diliman Student Council stressed that academic freedom is significant in fulfilling the university’s mission of pursuing and disseminating knowledge as it cultivates an “intellectually vibrant environment” that allows free exchange of ideas without fear of punishment.
They added that it is within this atmosphere that the university has produced graduates across disciplines that help in nation-building.
“Without academic freedom, we will be unable to fulfill our mission and we will be incapable of upholding our values of academic excellence and honor,” the student council added.
UP official Pernia said they may soon meet again by the end of the month or when schedules of the two parties are made clear. — Kristine Joy Patag with Christian Deiparine
The Department of National Defense has told the University of the Philippines that is is terminating an agreement that requires the police and military to coordinate with the university administration on entering or holding operations in UP campuses.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the department "is aware that there is indeed an ongoing clandestine recruitment" inside UP campuses and the accord is being used to prevent government from holding operations.
The move has been criticized widely on social media, with many saying it endangers the academic freedom and activism that UP is known for. UP campuses have also been venues for protests on national and social issues.
Photo: The UP Oblation symbolizes excellence, sacrifice and service for the common good. The STAR, file
The Department of National Defense says the appeal of UP Diliman's University Student Council to restore the abrogated 1989 DND-UP accord is untimely.
Defense spokesperson Arsenio Andolong points out that discussions between the DND and the UP on the cancellation of the pact have already started.
"Both parties have agreed to sit down again to further express their positions on the issue, and possibly come up with an acceptable deal that would balance legal considerations and moral obligations," Andolong says.
A technical working group will be formed to study a 1992 security agreement between the University of the Philippines and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, DILG spokesperson Jonathan Malaya says.
The agreement prohibits the police to operate on campus grounds without prior notice.
"At first I thought the men who made up the UP police were actually policemen. If these are security guards or security teams, they should be called such and regulated by the PNP. UP police force is not currently regulated by the PNP," Malaya tells ANC's "Headstart."
The police and military should not be in a panel that the Commission on Higher Education says will be tasked with defining academic freedom, Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan says.
The panel will be convened amid backlash against the security sector insistence on entering UP freely to conduct operations against supposed communist rebels.
"Might we ask [CHED Chair Prospero] De Vera, what qualifies the generals of the AFP and PNP as ‘education experts’ that justifies them having a role, a determining role at that, in defining academic freedom?” John Lazaro, SPARK national spokesperson, says in a statement.
“To add, why should they be included in a discussion about academic freedom, while the real stakeholders, the students, professors, and school employees are left out of the discussion?”
The Quezon City government supports academic freedom in the University of the Philippines and in other colleges and universities in the city, Mayor Joy Belmonte says in a press statement.
"I was a lecturer at the UP before, and I know how important academic freedom is in an educational institution. True learning will only happen in an environment where there is a free discourse of ideas by all members of the community," she says.
Quezon City is home to UP Diliman as well as to Ateneo de Manila University, both of which have been accused of being recruitment grounds for communist rebels. The two universities — as well as Far Eastern University, University of Santo Tomas and De La Salle University — have rejected the allegations.
"In Quezon City, academic freedom will always be protected and upheld," Belmonte also says.
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Disclosure: Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte is a shareholder of Philstar Global Corp., which operates digital news outlet Philstar.com. This article was produced following editorial guidelines.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana stands by his decision to abrogate the DND's agreement with the University of the Philippines.
"We stand by our choice to protect our youth and encourage our fellow Filipinos to help us finally end this 50-year war," Lorenzana says.
The abrogation of the UP-DND agreement is a fulfillment of my sworn duties. We stand by our choice to protect our youth and encourage our fellow Filipinos to help us finally end this 50-year war.#DefenSecDel #OneDefenseTeamPH pic.twitter.com/f2DfLFvu1C
— Delfin Lorenzana (@del_lorenzana) January 24, 2021
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