Statement of All UP Academic Employees Union on the Red-Tagging Spree of Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa
December 2, 2023
The All UP Academic Employees Union (AUPAEU) condemns the recent terror-tagging of its members in a senate hearing held last November 29, 2023. The said hearing purportedly investigates the alleged recruitment of student activists in universities to take up arms and join the communist insurgency. This kind of theatrics, played, on the one hand, by characters whose names are tainted with their record of human rights abuses and, on the other, by dubious rebel surrenderees, has been staged since the regime of Rodrigo Duterte and has been constantly replayed up to the regime of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. What occasions like this have so far done is to vilify and terror-tag activists and unionists, rather than address the socio-economic and political factors that fuel the raging fire of communist insurgency in the country. The senate hearing last Wednesday only replays the intent to vilify and terror-tag, evidenced by the mention of the names of two academics who also happen to be members of the AUPAEU.
The AUPAEU condemns the act of terror-tagging in the strongest possible terms. The hearing last Wednesday was not the first incident where academics from the University of the Philippines are terror-tagged. There have been several instances in the past where union members and academics were terror-tagged, merely because of their commitment to a pro-people and emancipatory scholarship. Not only does terror-tagging dangerously put the lives of activists, unionists, and even academics at risk, but also blur the root-causes of societal problems by identifying convenient scapegoats. The union is deeply alarmed as terror-tagging has often been a prelude to more and intense forms of harassment, including the filing of trumped-up charges, arrests, abductions, and even killings.
The AUPAEU reiterates its call to the University of the Philippines to urgently act on the demands of various sectors of the University to create a system-wide Committee for the Protection of Academic Freedom and Human Rights. As the political situation in the country has continued to worsen, a committee such as this could effectively mobilize the needed institutional support to protect its various stakeholders from harassments and attacks and at the same time take proactive measures to ensure the safety of its researchers, academics, and students whose commitment to an emancipatory and pro-people scholarship has been terror-tagged by the state.
An enduring peace is built on social justice. Terror-tagging should not have a place under a principled process of negotiations pursuing a just and enduring peace. The academic union challenges the Marcos Jr. regime to act in good faith in its intent to talk peace with the communists. Just days before the senate hearing, the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines have agreed to resume their peace negotiations. The Marcos Jr. regime cannot pretend to talk peace while continuing the campaign of suppression of supposed state enemies. The AUPAEU strongly supports the opportunity in resuming the peace talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
Link to the original post on the All UP Academic Employees Union Facebook page.