(Eagle News)–“Government is not the evil monster that you portray us to be.”
The Department of the Interior and Local Government had this to say to University of the Philippines students who staged a walkout on Tuesday, Aug. 20, to denounce what they said was the intrusion of police and military in campuses.
According to DILG spokesperson Jonathan Malaya, the agency has “no problem” with student activism, noting that there are “many in government today who are former student activists and therefore understand the need to have youth who are critical thinkers.”
But “when you use the democratic space provided by the Constitution as a front or excuse to recruit, train, and wage armed struggle against duly constituted authority, then that becomes a criminal act and must be prevented by the State,” Malaya said.
He said the government was “alarmed by the intensification of communist recruitment in schools” especially since communist rebel groups “are targeting minors who are in Senior High School.”
In the first place, Malaya said the claim there would be a militarization of campuses, particularly in UP, is again “classic communist propaganda.”
“Using the politics of fear to portray the government as a repressive monster to earn political ‘pogi’ points from students in order to ‘arouse, organize, mobilize’ the youth sector,” he said.
Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Albayalde has denied there was a militarization of campuses, saying the presence of security forces in schools and universities was to “prevent massive recruitment and massive radicalization of innocent students.”
The walkout took place after the Senate panel on public order and dangerous drugs held a hearing on the alleged abduction of a Far Eastern University senior high school student by communists.
The student denied she had been abducted, and said she deliberately left home.
During the hearing, several former rebels alleged Communists recruited students to their cause.
