On Nat’l Press Freedom Day, Visayas youth stand up for media

CEBU, Philippines – Student journalists marched in their respective campuses in the University of the Philippines Cebu (UPC) and University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) Miagao Campus on National Press Freedom Day on Friday, August 30, calling for justice and solidarity with campus publications and media workers around the country.

“Ang kinahanglan namo kay usa ka balaod nga adunay gahum nga kaya mukagat, nga musulay mupalag sa bisan unsa nga mutamak sa among kagawasan,” Ritzie Lao, editor-in-chief of  UPC’s Tug-ani, said in a speech.

(We need a law that has the power to bite, to fight against anything that infringes on our freedom)

Lao referred to House Bill No. 1155 or the Campus Press Freedom bill sponsored by Kabataan Representative Raoul Manuel. In late July, the House’s higher education committee moved to form a technical working group to investigate press freedom violations in the campus. 

Members of different student publications already joined calls for stronger alliances against censorship and to repeal the Campus Press Freedom Act of 1991 during the World Press Freedom Day in May. 

For the Ang Mangingisda, the student publication of UPV’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, student journalists still face surveillance and red tagging on top of harassment from military personnel.

On August 16, police restricted youth leaders from different UP student councils, including student journalists, from returning to the UP Tacloban campus during a lightning protest in downtown Tacloban City.

Tiffany Xu, editor-in-chief of Ang Mangingisda, urged fellow campus journalists during a picket rally at UPV Miagao Campus, to continue to be critical and to listen to the calls of the masses—to hold the line wherever, whenever.

“Like you fellow students, the goal of attaining a free press by our student journalists also comes from claiming the freedom of students in a free institution and a free society, because until all the classes are free, the state and its allies, the big bourgeoisie compradors, and imperialists will continue to push its repressive system on us all,” Xu said in Filipino.

“Ika nga ng maraming mamamahayag (Like what many journalists say), to write is already to choose.”

Stop the attacks

In a statement on August 28, Tug-ani called out several attacks against student and community journalists.

“These cases illustrate the censorship that the state and its forces impose down to the very roots of the mass struggle: the campus press, which is supposed to be protected by a law from the 1990s that is powerless in the grand scheme of things,” Tug-ani’s statement read.

The campus publication mentioned the case of Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a former Altermidya correspondent and editor-in-chief of UP Vista—the official student publication of the University of the Philippines in Tacloban City.

It has been four years since Cumpio was arrested on February 7, 2020 over alleged possession of illegal firearms during a raid by military and police, amid the Duterte administration’s crackdown against critics and progressives.

Much like Cumpio, Tug-ani wrote, Myles Albasin, a mass communication graduate of UPC, was also arrested over accusations of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, together with five other youth activists in 2018.

“We clamor for true freedom…We clamor for the abolition of forced censorship by the government and state forces. We clamor for the end of red-tagging and arrests based on false charges,” Tug-ani said in their statement. – Rappler.com