‘His words are absolute’
Instead of erasing the lines that seem to draw the margins that still sunder the communities, President Rodrigo Duterte chose to let his hyenas hunt wild with an earshot of his grim.
Weeks before, in the midst of hearing spearheaded by Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, police and military forces were seen hounding, penetrating the university premises, which is a clear violation of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines — Department of National Defense (PUP-DND) accord, or more colloquially known as Prudente-Ramos accord, which states the prohibition of any armed forces within the premises and outside 50 meters of the university.
Meanwhile, President Duterte just recently threatened to order the deployment of thousands of police and military in the PUP to gun down the students whom the armed forces perceived to be part of “communist” groups.
“I ordered my police and military to go after you (students of PUP), dead or alive,” he said in an interview with the media on September 10.
In a serious manner or not, these remarks have direct and indirect damages to the community. The entire time Duterte is in the presidency, his remarks have triggered the bigoted enforcement of attacks to various marginalized sectors.
For instance, on February 7, 2018, President Duterte asserted in his speech against the New People’s Army, “We will not kill you, we will just shoot you in the vagina,” emphasizing that without the women’s vagina, they are ‘utterly useless’.
A year after, an alleged New People’s Army female fighter, Cindy Torado, was slain and her remains are found to be defiled: arms and neck all-fractured, and genitals shattered by a bullet. This violated the international humanitarian law stating the prohibition of violence to life and person such as cruel treatment, torture, and ‘outrages upon personal dignity’; the case of Tirado falls in the scope of cruel treatment.
Another disruptive claims of President Duterte was a part of his second State of the Nation Address. He then said, “Sabihin ko diyan sa mga lumad ngayon, umalis kayo diyan. Bobobahin ko ‘yan. Isali ko ‘yang mga istruktura niyo.”
A year forward, military airstrikes threw bombs 500 meters away from a Lumad school in Talaingod Town, Davao del Norte, traumatizing teachers and students within the premises of the school. Separate from this, on July 12, 2019, Department of Education — Southern Mindanao ordered the shutdown of 55 Lumad schools in the region.
Lastly, the “ouster matrix” that the Office of the President released in the public on May 1, to which they claimed, was not fully verified from an unknown source but endangers the names comprising it, including the majority of critical journalists and media institutions, who are known to be recording the abuses and corruption cases of the administration.
Just months before, alternative media sites namely: Pinoy Weekly, Kodao Productions, AlterMidya, and the likes, were hit by 76gb DDoS attack, rendering their online sites shut down.
The national coordinator of AlterMidya, Rhea Padilla, noted in her talk in PUP, discussing the current plight of the alternative and mainstream media in the current administration, “His (Duterte’s) words are absolute, it finds ways to direct an attack to whoever and whatever his target is. Be careful.”
These attacks all buoyed down and started by the simplest whine of the President whenever he faced serious condemnations from the various sectors. So when he started to aim at the students of PUP, he already had launched an attack or is planning to cripple the limbs of decades of struggle of the scholars.
In this crucial time for the scholars of PUP, in addition to the worsening condition and rising political tension outside the community, students and the university should be able to strengthen the cornerstone of dissent and firmly demand accountability from the harmful remarks that are intending to weaken the fists and voices of the scholars through engendering statements of dispute in all sorts of the platform.
This Op-Ed article was first published in September 2019, discussing the campus militarization threats in the PUP and other universities, for clamoring against state violence and impunity.
