UP community reps slam admin agreement with AFP

MANILA, Philippines – Community representatives from the University of the Philippines (UP) condemned an agreement the university administration signed with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to foster cooperation between the two institutions that have historically been at odds.

In a statement on Friday, August 9, UP’s student regent, faculty regent, and staff regent, together with student council alliance Kasama sa UP and the Defend UP Network, said that the UP System administration’s decision to sign the Declaration of Cooperation “gravely compromised UP’s academic freedom.”

The Declaration of Cooperation is meant to facilitate various initiatives, such as joint research projects, academic programs, and community engagement activities, “with the aim of strategically aligning resources and expertise between AFP and UP.”

“UP purportedly champions fearless scholarship and critical thinking, but its administration now wants to ‘strategically align its resources and expertise’ with a coercive institution that we all know has been accused countless times by local and international human rights watchdog groups of trampling on civil liberties in its purported counterinsurgency campaigns and attacks on government critics and dissidents,” the statement read.

The sectoral representatives said that the signing of the declaration “essentially requires” the university to be complicit with human rights violations and political oppression, and “legitimizes” a crackdown on critical voices and progressive initiatives.

The regents said they observed an increase in police presence on UP’s Diliman campus around the time Senator Ronald dela Rosa, former police chief of the Duterte administration, made a fresh call on guidance counselors to profile students that are “prone to NPA (New People’s Army) recruitment.”

“The declaration was also signed by the [Angelo] Jimenez administration without any consultation with the UP community. This is most despicable and should merit the strongest condemnation from the students, faculty, staff, and other community members, including all university councils in all constituent universities,” they said.

UP students and activists have long been subjected to red-tagging and other forms of state harassment and threats. These stem from a history of resistance from the dictatorship of the late former president Ferdinand E. Marcos.

One notable incident from the Marcos regime was the Diliman Commune of 1971, when UP students’ peaceful solidarity strike with jeepney drivers turned violent when the military made its way onto campus in a bid to suppress the students.

Student leader Sonia Soto and then-defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile signed the 1982 accord that prevented state forces from entering any of the UP campuses.

In 1989, the UP-DND (Department of National Defense) accord succeeded the earlier agreement, but it was unilaterally terminated in 2021 under then-president Rodrigo Duterte. – Rappler.com