WHAT WENT BEFORE: School libraries targeted first

In October last year, Demetrio Anduyan Jr., director of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) for the Cordillera, issued Regional Memorandum No. 113, which called on higher education institutions under its jurisdiction to take part in the “region-wide removal of subversive materials both in libraries and online platforms.”

According to Anduyan, CHEd supports the “whole-of-nation” approach of the Duterte administration’s insurgency campaign, a strategy that also led to the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. The memorandum described the targeted library materials as “literatures, references, publications, resources, and items that contain pervasive ideologies of the communist-terrorist groups.”

The CHEd Cordillera memorandum was issued weeks after the Kalinga State University in Tabuk City and the Isabela State University, both in northern Luzon, and Aklan State University in the Visayas purged books and documents related to the insurgency and even the peace negotiations conducted during the past administrations between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. It also urged school officials to surrender these materials to the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency and to submit a record of all of the items that were removed. —Inquirer research

SOURCE: Inquirer ARCHIVES