The Makabayan lawmakers have filed a resolution seeking to uphold the 1989 agreement forged between the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Department of National Defense (DND) and the academic freedom of all educational institutions.
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Kabataan partylist Rep. Sarah Jane Elago led filing of House Resolution No. 1491, expressing six-man Makabayan bloc’s strong opposition to the unilateral termination of the UP-DND accord on January 15, 2021.
The 1989 accord disallows police and military personnel from entering and conducting operations in UP campuses without prior notification.
According to Makabayan lawmakers, the accord is a mutually binding agreement between UP and DND, and cannot be unilaterally abrogated by either party as provided by law.
“One-sidedly and arbitrarily terminating the accord which is being enforced for more than 30 years already and which the parties have generally respected through the years is an affront to civilian institutions and alarming as it could lead again to extensive campus militarization and brazen attacks on human rights,” the three-page resolution read.
In the resolution, the Makabayan bloc said unilateral abrogation of the 1989 agreement and the looming militarization of campuses nationwide "undermine academic freedom, and threaten the right to life, liberty, and security and freedoms of speech, of expression, and of peaceful assembly."
“Schools should be safe spaces and zones of peace that are free from police and military presence and intervention, harassment, and intimidation,” they said.
The progressive lawmakers reminded that the 1987 Philippine Constitution provides that academic freedom shall be enjoyed in all institutions of higher learning.
Signed on June 30, 1989, the UP-DND Accord prohibits members of the police and military to enter premises of any of the UP campuses except in cases of hot pursuit and similar occasions of emergency, upon the request of UP officials, or ordinary transit through UP premises;
Under the 1989 Accord, the DND agreed that the military and police “shall not interfere with peaceful protest actions by UP constituents within UP premises”, the lawmakers said.
“The agreements were in response to widespread human rights violations during and after martial rule, and borne out of democratic rights movements,” they said, recalling that the 1989 pact was signed days following the arrest of Donato Continente, a staffer of UP Diliman’s official student publication Philippine Collegian, by the police and military at Vinzons Hall in UP Diliman.
“These agreements, however, have been breached from time to time by the state forces especially in recent years,” they lament.
They said the Duterte government through the DND unilaterally abrogated the 1989 UP-DND Accord effective on January 15, 2021, "on the premise of unfounded claims of clandestine communist recruitment in campuses and national security.”