Infringement of Students’ Rights: Red-tagging and Campus Repression
30 June 2011
The Sandigan para sa Mag-aaral at Sambayanan Party Alliance (SAMASA-PA) strongly condemns the deliberate act of red-tagging from an officer of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) which aimed to demonize the mass organizations under the party-alliance. This malicious stance is a clear assault against our democratic right to organize and be organized. Last 25 June 2011, the National Service and Training Program (NSTP) held its first assembly to discuss topics under its Common Module. Upon the lecture of National Security, Private First Class Mendoza, the designated speaker, associated the organizations ANAKBAYAN, League of Filipino Students (LFS), Sandigan para sa Mag-aaral at Sambayanan (SAMASA), among others, to revolutionary group namely the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The module deliberately showed the logos representing the organizations recognized by the university and were labeled as communist fronts and thus a threat to national security. This kind of allegations against our organizations is never new in the party alliance. For the past three (3) years, the military, through the ROTC has been active in spreading and instilling malicious accusations to their students against our organizations. It has been involved in razing of publicities and propaganda materials and even in carrying out surveillance works against our members. The mass organizations under the SAMASA-PA are legal, legitimate and recognized organizations by the university. The SAMASA-PA engage and utilize legal forms of struggle such us street parliament and negotiations while the CCP-NPA-NDFP believe in armed struggle to trample down the current exploitative and anti-people system. Although we respect and recognize their form of struggle, we in SAMASA-PA are separate from these groups and never have we associated in any way with them. These malicious stances are a grave violation to our democratic right to organize and be organized as well as an apparent maneuver of harassment and intimidation. It is insolence to the nature and colorful history of these mass organizations which have contributed greatly in the people’s mass movement to advance a pro-student, pro-people as well as genuine freedom and democracy for our country. The SAMASA-PA, since its inception 30 years ago, has been consistent in its unswerving standpoint to serve the students and the people. We believe that this is a clear manifestation of the fascist character of the current Philippine Educational. We cannot deny the worsening crisis in our current society and government. Thus, it is but right for the people, especially the youth to take a stand, mobilize and fight for their democratic rights. What is devastating is that, instead of addressing and taking these issues into consideration, the government responds in intensifying their despotic ways to the toiling masses. This we believe is also part of the current counter-insurgency campaign, the Oplan Bayanihan, of the Aquino Administration wherein thousands of student activists, leaders and civilians have been illegally arrested, abducted and even killed. It is in essence a continuation of the Oplan Bantay Laya under the previous regime where grave violations of the people’s democratic rights and lack of distinction between legal activists to armed groups has been committed by military personnel. We denounce as well as challenge Mendoza to revert his baseless and malicious accusations against ANAKBAYAN, LFS and SAMASA organizations. We call on the UP Administration to uphold and advance the democratic rights of the students and all its constituents against any forms of repression. We likewise call on all the Iskolar ng Bayan to be critical and vigilant and never in any way be afraid in defending their academic freedom and democratic rights in the university and in the society at large. STOP RED-TAGGING! OPPOSE CAMPUS REPRESSION! END STATE FASCISM! DEFEND OUR RIGHT TO ORGANIZE! | be involved |