UP Visayas to sue cops over protest dispersal

ILOILO CITY—The University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV)  is suing scores of policemen who entered its campus in the city after they dispersed a rally against cuts in the UP system’s budget.

UP student councils also condemned the dispersal and the arrest of two faculty members and nine leaders of militant organizations.

“The UPV administration condemns the incident, especially the entry of anti-riot policemen into the campus. They had no right and authority to be there,” Nestor Yungue, vice chancellor for administration, told the Inquirer.

READ: Cops disperse rally vs budget cuts to UP Visayas, arrest 11 
Under the 1989 Sotto-Enrile Accord, an agreement between UP and the Department of National Defense, military and police forces are prohibited from university premises unless authorized by school officials.

About 200 policemen wielding truncheons and shields broke up the protest march of mainly UPV students and faculty members against the P2.2-billion cut in the UP budget about 3:30 p.m. on Friday. They arrested 11 persons, including humanities teacher and playwright Erick Dasig Aguilar and history teacher Gretchen

Velarde, on charges of illegal assembly and “disobedience to lawful order.”

The teachers agreed to go with the policemen so that the students would be allowed to leave a police cordon, Aguilar said. They were released about 1 a.m. on Friday on recognizance which did not require posting bail.

Insp. Shella Mae Acanto- Sangrines, spokesperson of the Apec 2015 Iloilo City Site Task Group, said the protesters did not have a permit to hold the rally. The task group is the lead body of 20 government agencies and offices organizing the hosting of meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Council (Apec) in Iloilo.

READ: Militant group condemns arrest of students in UP Visayas rally 
Protest rallies have been prohibited and dispersed in the city since the Apec meeting started on Sept. 20.

“The dispersal was done peacefully and according to procedures. We made sure none of the students were harmed and they were allowed to go home,” Sangrines told the Inquirer.

Yungue said the students were dispersed and the teachers arrested even after they already agreed to return to the campus.

Stephanie Louise Lucena, chair of the UPV Student Council, said some of the students were frightened when the policemen pushed then and ran after them. “But we are more angry on why they did this to us,” she said.

The USC and school officials plan to conduct stress debriefing sessions for students who might have been traumatized.

“We are outraged by the disrespect towards our right to peaceful assembly and to freely express our demands,” the student council, UP Office of the Student Regent, and the Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP, the system-wide alliance of student councils, said in a joint statement.

“To our knowledge, the act of violence against the Iskolar ng Bayan and the faculty is done because of the Iloilo City government’s accommodation of the Apec ministerial meetings. The violent dispersal of the supposedly peaceful protest action and the arrest of our professors and supporters are testaments that the government continues to deny us of our rights to express freely,” they said.

Yungue said the policemen did not heed the order of Chancellor Rommel Espinosa, relayed through school guards, to leave the campus after the dispered students reported their presence to school officials. “I had to personally tell the policemen to leave,” he said.

He said the policemen who came with firearms and antiriot gear “are trampling on this sanctuary of free expression.”