Kabataan slams Negros school monitoring call

By Juliane Judilla

A youth party-list group criticized Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio “Bong” Lacson’s recent call for schools to monitor campus activities, warning that such measures could threaten academic freedom and endanger student activists.

The statement came in the wake of the deaths of former student activists in military operations on Negros Island, including Vince Francis Dingding, a former University of the Philippines Cebu student leader.

Dingding was among five alleged New People’s Army rebels killed in an encounter with Philippine Army troops on May 16 in Cauayan, Negros Occidental.

In response, Florence Guzon, Kabataan Party-list vice president for the Visayas, said Lacson’s remarks appeared to encourage schools “to perform intelligence work on our students.”

“What the governor wishes to do only stands to stifle academic freedom, critical thinking, and the holistic development of the youth in our academic institutions,” Guzon said in a statement.

Kabataan Party-list described the governor’s pronouncement as part of the government’s “Whole-of-Nation Approach,” which the group said seeks to involve civilian institutions in counterinsurgency efforts led by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

The Whole-of-Nation Approach was institutionalized under Executive Order No. 70 in 2018, which also created the NTF-ELCAC to pursue what the government calls inclusive and sustainable peace. (Supreme Court E-Library)

The group argued that linking student activism to armed rebellion creates a “dangerous false equivalence” that could place students involved in legitimate campus and community campaigns at risk.

“This is subtle red-tagging,” Guzon said.

“Policing, and eventually blocking progressive student actions within and without our academic institutions, will not deter our youth and students from participating in essential campaigns advancing the objective demands of the people,” she added.

Kabataan also maintained that the roots of armed conflict lie in longstanding social issues such as poverty, landlessness, and limited economic opportunities.

“So long as the perennial crises of widespread poverty, severe landlessness, and lacking opportunities continue to fester in our country, resistance against structural inequalities, in whatever form that may be, will always arise,” the statement read.

The group urged Lacson and school administrators to protect students from “state-sponsored monitoring and intimidation” and instead uphold academic freedom and holistic student development.

Kabataan further called on the government to resume peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, saying renewed talks could address longstanding grievances related to land reform and poverty alleviation.

The GRP-NDFP peace process has been marked by repeated resumptions and breakdowns since the 1980s, with recent calls for renewed negotiations focused on addressing the roots of the armed conflict.