"I can assure the military that there is no Red October uprising being planned in the universities of the Philippines."
"I can assure the military that there is no Red October uprising being planned in the universities of the Philippines."
Redbaiting is a dangerous mindset. It’s one of the most terrible thing government, especially military and police officials, can do. In our history, smearing people with the communist label has resulted in killings, disappearances, and even massacres. And when the target are our young people, such accusations are criminal, endangering the best hope of our society.
As a professor of law, philosophy, and governance, with almost 40 years of teaching all sorts of students in schools from Luzon to Mindanao (including seven of the schools tagged by the military/police as infiltrated by Communists), I am totally with the students and youth activists here and I call on everyone to stand by them. We cannot afford to lose another generation of our best and most committed young people.
I can assure the military that there is no Red October uprising being planned in the universities of the Philippines. For the Catholic schools, it’s a Blue October because it’s a Marian month where we pray the rosary every day. In some schools, October is the end of the semester so the finals week is in the middle of the month and for others its midterms time. In all these schools, I see only young, idealistic people and I see them now endangered by the reckless statements of some officials.
As to the accusations that professors are teaching students the wrong thing by showing martial law firms or by talking about martial law in our classrooms, let me be clear that I am very proud of the martial law commemoration exercise I have developed with my students. Using the Bantayog ng mga Bayani roster of heroes, my law and undergraduate students choose martial heroes and heroines that they identify with and share their stories in class using creative means. My students every year sing, dance, perform skits, recite poetry, and produce videos to pay tribute to those who died in the fight against the US-Marcos dictatorship.
I will not apologize that I make sure to highlight for my students the connection of the martial law of Marcos with the dangers we face today in the era of Duterte, while also making sure they can make distinctions. In my classes, I do make sure that the students get a full picture of what happened during the dictatorship. We do not romanticize the communist revolutionaries among the heroes and heroines even as we honor them for their courage and sacrifice. For sure, we also do not demonize the soldiers who were faithful to their duties, but condemn only their masters who used military to plunder the people and perpetuate themselves in power.
Whenever I have the opportunity, I make sure to honor also the young military officer whose life was cut short in unjustified wars.
Earlier this week, in Xavier University (XU), in my hometown Cagayan de Oro where I started my teaching career 37 years ago, I shared with my constitutional law students my own martial law story. The XU campus was a big setting for that story as I taught philosophy there in 1981-83. At night, national democratic collectives openly met in the field behind the chapel. Military intelligence agents enrolled in my classes and followed us around. I knew XU students who died in the struggle, some unfortunately killed by their own comrades.
In every class I do the martial law activity, I invite my students to read with me Pete Lacaba’s Prometheus Unbound, ending with Marcos Hitler a Diktador Tuta and more importantly at the end we all exclaim: “Never forget, never again!”
I am not in a mood to fight the military and the police. Since the 1986 EDSA revolution, I have engaged and collaborated with the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police on human rights, leadership, and governance. As a former government official myself and someone routinely asked by the government to help out in several issues of national importance, I have worked productively with the AFP and PNP countless times. I have lectured (and continue to do so) many times to AFP officials and police officers and all the time they do not disappoint with the seriousness and patriotism they approach the topics I talk about—from climate change to negotiation skills. I have mentored a few military and police officials, some of them already high-ranking, and it has been a pleasure to do that.
Because of my long experience with the AFP and PNP, I am bothered by the redbaiting going on. This is not the professional military and police I know. For sure, the recent statements are is based on faulty and outdated intelligence, similar to the terrorism case brought against the Communist Party of the Philippines where many good people were smeared without basis.
I am glad to hear PNP Chief Oscar Albayade say he would like to engage with universities. I say we engage and educate each other. I hope I can enlighten General Alabayade and also learn from him.
Among others, in that dialogue, I will echo Sarah Elago, Kabataan Youth Representative, who posted in Facebook: “By tagging school activities as recruitment fronts in their Red October scam, Duterte and the AFP are setting a dangerous precedent to directly, or through administrators, crackdown on student activities and attack the students’ right to organize, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. By hitting on films critical of dictators and tyrants, the Duterte regime wishes to stifle critical thinking and expression through film and art. Duterte is playing straight from the Marcosian playbook, engaging in censorship of films and pronouncements critical of the regime.”
I will echo also what one of my bright PUP student said to respond to the lament why scholars criticize the government: “Hindi gobyerno ang nagpapaaral sa mga Isko. Pera ng taumbayan ’yan. Ang utang na loob ng mga Isko ay sa Bayan at hindi sa kung sinong nakaupo sa gobyerno.” (It’s not the government that supports the studies of scholars. They owe the country and not those who are in power.)
I will share how haunted I am by the faces of Rizalina Ilagan, Jessica Sales, Cristina Catalla, Leticia Ladlad, and other activists from UPLB who up to now are desaparecidos, having been abducted in the early years of martial law. Their eyes pierce my heart and I find myself crying when I imagined what happened and was done to them. The story of Liliosa Hilao, the heroine and martyr from Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila where I now teach, is always in my mind. And yes, the contemporary story of missing UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño is always in my consciousness. The conviction of the mastermind of their abduction, General Palparan, is good but it is disturbing that the mentality that led to their disappearances still reigns in the military and police.
I will tell the military and the police how impressed I was with the student leaders that spoke in the United People’s Action last Sept. 21. Fresh, young, passionate, full of hope—all of us should thank this new generation of activists. But I also worry that what happened in the 1970s and 1980s will happen again. We cannot afford that. Edgar Jopson and Lean Alejandro would have become presidents of the Philippines if their lives were not cut short in the struggle.
To my colleagues in all schools and universities, it is important that our campuses become sanctuaries where students are protected and shielded from attacks by state forces. Let’s set aside our own ideological biases and our fears of being manipulated, something that made universities like Ateneo de Manila turn its back on its own activist students and professors when martial law was proclaimed. Let’s all rally around the students and make sure they are not smeared, targeted, and killed. In our specific context, this is what “Never forget, never again!’ means.
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