NUSP accuses gov’t forces of conducting manhunt for student activist

The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) has accused the Armed Forces of the Philippines of launching a manhunt for one of its officers.

In a statement, the NUSP said that a manhunt for NUSP deputy secretary general Rejhon Soriano Modesto—a former Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) student—started after the Philippine National Police claimed that PUP and University of the Philippines (UP) students are being recruited by the New People's Army, based on the account of 20 supposed NPA members who surrendered to authorities on Monday.

“Only several hours after the PNP tagged students of the PUP and UP as suppliers of the NPA, elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) were reported to have been looking for Rejhon Soriano Modesto. The NUSP condemns this attack as a direct manifestation of the Duterte regime’s intensified crackdown on student activists,” the NUSP said in a statement.

The NUSP said that the search for Modesto is "worryingly similar" to when the police looked for UP student regent Ivy Taroma in September 2018.

The student organization contended that the military and the police are out to intimidate, harass, and conduct surveillance on student activists to instill fear and quell dissent.

“[President] Duterte shows his desperation to silence vocal critics of his administration by employing fascist tactics such as the red-tagging of schools, profiling of teachers, and the implementation of mandatory ROTC. These and other maneuvers violate the democratic rights of the students and will only inspire them to wage fiercer resistance,” the NUSP said.

“The student movement cannot be stopped. Duterte's tyranny, however, will inevitably lead to his own downfall,” it added.

'Archaic red-tagging'

The College Editors Guild of the Philippines also blasted the police for what it described as a rehashed narrative of linking student activists to communist rebels, saying that the notion that student activists are forced to join the armed revolution has been long discredited.

"Too bad that the police cannot come up with believable narrative countering the growing youth movement with its archaic red-tagging tactic," the CEGP said in a separate statement.

"The madman President Duterte and his lackeys can no longer hide their dirty tracks of incompetence and corruption. The progressive youth that his regime and all of that has passed have branded as armed rebels are resolved in raising their commitment to serve the marginalized and neglected in the society," it added.

The youth, CEGP said, are joining the ranks of the oppressed sectors of the society "in pushing for their rightful interests and fending off greedy and destructive state sanctions and policies."

Eleazar denies manhunt

National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) Chief Director Guillermo Eleazar told GMA News Online that he is not aware of a manhunt for Modesto, while PNP spokesperson Benigno Durana is still working to verify the information as of posting time.

The Philippines was described as being an "extremely dangerous" environment for rights defenders by international human rights organization Front Line Defenders in its 2018 analysis, released last week.

In its report on the Philippine situation, the group included the allegations of an ouster plot against Duterte last year, when the military accused several schools of being recruitment hotbeds for communist organizations.

The move was decried by the Commission on Human Rights and by the schools themselves as putting students' safety and security at risk. The schools also denied their students' involvement in any such plot. — BM, GMA News