UP Diliman execs: Red-tagging has no place in society that values education

Officials of the University of the Philippines Diliman on Tuesday asserted academic freedom as they denounced the red-tagging that followed the termination of the pact that kept state forces out of its campuses for decades.

The UP Diliman Executive Committee said no less than the 1987 Constitution guarantees academic freedom for all institutions of higher education.

The UP community is protesting the unilateral abrogation of the university's 1989 agreement with the Department of National Defense which barred state forces from entering campus without prior notice to school officials.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who ended the pact without consulting UP, said the accord is "obsolete." He claimed that UP is a hotbed for communist recruitment.

Soon after, the military published an apparently unvetted list of UP students who supposedly joined the New People's Army and were either killed or captured. Amid criticism, the Armed Forces apologized and said it is investigating how the information got released.

In a statement, the UP Diliman Executive Committee said Lorenzana's claim of the accord being obsolete is "an assertion that academic freedom, on which the accord is based, has no more place in a higher institution of learning."

The committee said academic freedom allows students, faculty, and staff to engage in critical thought without fear of being silenced.

"We need to uphold academic freedom to maintain academic excellence as our commitment and service to the nation," it said.

"May we all be reminded that red-tagging has no place in a society that values education and respects civil liberties," it added.

Red-tagging, or labelling groups and individuals as communist, is considered by the United Nations' human rights office as a "persistent and powerful threat to civil society and freedom of expression."

In many cases, red-tagging preceded the murders of activists and human rights workers. Activists have also reported being harassed and surveilled by whom they believe are state forces targeting them in line with the government's anti-communist insurgency campaign. —KBK, GMA News