i-Team Report
Fernando del Mundo, Chief

(Second of two parts)

MANILA, Philippines—Since Jose Maria Sison launched his Maoist rebellion four decades ago, schools and universities have provided him with idealistic revolutionaries ready to die for his cause.

They still do.

Lightning rallies, mutilated posters of President Macapagal-Arroyo and missing students are telltale signs, according to the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

In response to the continuing proselytizing, the military has mounted a counteroffensive on campuses against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).

In August, four members of a student leftist organization at Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) were haled to court for drawing a moustache on an Arroyo poster and destroying announcements of military activities.

The four, including the president of the leftist League of Filipino Students (LFS), were charged with malicious mischief.

Denouncing military “infiltration” of their campus, the students went to the Commission on Human Rights and accused the AFP of baseless “red-baiting.”

The campaign in PUP by the AFP’s Civil Military Operations (CMO) is part of a drive aimed at cutting support and foiling recruitment activities by the CPP in the so-called “white areas” in Metro Manila and other urban centers.

Col. Buenaventura Pascual, CMO chief, says that a PUP student identified as Diana Publico, who was reported as missing since restiveness hit the campus in recent months, may have actually gone underground.

Cradle of youth activism

Before Sison founded the CPP on Dec. 26, 1968, he was the leader of Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth).

KM leaders had turned the University of the Philippines into a hotbed of student activism in the 1960s. Its protests in Manila in the years before President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law usually ended in bloody confrontations with riot police.

Upon the declaration of martial law, many KM activists went to the hills, mostly comprising the cream of the crop of the country’s elite universities.

Army Lt. Col. Leopoldo Galon Jr., 7th Civil Relations Group commander, says the CPP’s armed struggle still relied on universities in Metro Manila for “quality cadres.”

“What we are against is the armed struggle that lured away activists from their activism,” Galon says.

“The school is their training ground. Students and activists join rallies, cultural presentations and carry out ‘pinta-dikit’ operation (vandalism),” Pascual says.

“They have a big impact among farmers and youth in the countryside when they apply all these things in the province,” he adds.

University Belt

But House Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo says students joining the armed struggle is a “natural consequence” of grasping the realities of Philippine society.

“There is no question that some youth from colleges and universities have joined the NPA,” Ocampo says.

“But whatever actions the AFP does, either openly or overtly, in schools may not succeed in stopping the underground movement unless the government addresses its problems,” he points out.

The vigorous recruitment that once transpired in the University of the Philippines has now shifted to the state-owned schools in the “University Belt”—with PUP having the the “strongest” underground structure, Pascual observes.

PUP is home to at least 18 leftist organizations, including Anakbayan, Bayan Muna and the LFS, he points out.

“We found out that our list of those killed in and recovered from encounters with the NPA are mostly students from the PUP who became political officers of the armed movement,” Pascual says.

The increasing cases ranging from malicious mischief, robbery, grave threats and assault filed against activists in the PUP are also evidence of NPA activities in the school.

ROTC

As a countermeasure, Pascual has strengthened the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in the school by stamping out hazing among incoming officers and getting rid of the cadet uniform.

His programs have managed to draw 1,400 freshman students into the ROTC. But Pascual admits that the number is small compared to the more than 8,000 other students who remain exposed to the leftist organizations.

Since 2006, the CMO has been holding dialogues—“campus tours”—with roughly 40,000 students from state-owned universities and city colleges in Metro Manila, warning them of “deceptive” recruitment strategies of the NPA.

“The Left is 90-percent propaganda and 10-percent armed struggle, while the AFP is 10-percent propaganda and 90-percent force,” he says.

“This time, the AFP wants to fight its enemy not with guns, but with words.”

The CMO’s “awareness drives” often take up half a day, where “rebel returnees” share their experiences to the young students.

The military campaign in schools coincidentally was initiated amid a surge in extrajudicial executions and disappearances that has drawn expressions of concern here and abroad.

Leftist inroads

The human rights group Karapatan says that since Ms Arroyo became president in 2001, political killings have reached more than 900. The Inquirer count is about 300.

“I think the government feels gravely threatened by the left in general, in particular its dramatic gains in the electoral parliamentary arena,” says Rep. Teddy Casiño of the leftist party-list group Bayan Muna.

“Thus, they have adjusted the counterinsurgency program to target even activists engaged in the legal struggle, resulting in the systematic and widespread extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights atrocities,” Casiño says.

Ms Arroyo has directed the military to eliminate the communist insurgency before her term expires in 2010.

Activists say part of the military response is to silence student and youth leaders and neutralize CPP activities on campuses.

With a report from Nikko Dizon