This week the DND dropped a bombshell in its efforts to defeat the NPA. They announced they would no longer honor their decades old agreement with the University of the Philippines to not allow cops or troops on campus without prior notice. DND Secretary Lorenzana says the times they are a changing.
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| https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/772312/lorenzana-says-decades-old-dnd-up-deal-obsolete/story/ |
The University of the Philippines has become a "safe haven for the enemies of the state," prompting the Department of the National Defense to terminate its pact with the university regarding the ban on the entry of state forces on the campus, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Tuesday.
In a statement explaining the termination of the agreement, Lorenzana said the pact, which was signed in 1989, is already "obsolete."
"The times and circumstances have changed since the agreement was signed in 1989, eight years after the martial law ended. The agreement was a gesture of courtesy accorded to UP upon the University’s request," Lorenzana said.
He added that through the years the agreement was enforced, UP has become "the breeding ground of intransigent individuals and groups whose extremist beliefs have inveigled students to join their ranks to fight against the government."
"The country’s premier state university has become a safe haven for enemies of the state," Lorenzana said.
Several other reasons have been given for the termination of this accord including the bizarre allegation that there might be a shabu lab on campus.
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| https://www.rappler.com/nation/afp-uses-drug-war-justify-ending-up-dnd-accord |
“What if there’s a shabu laboratory, for instance, inside the UP community or campus and we have a valid arrest warrant and search warrant?” Arevalo, a lawyer, said in a press briefing on Wednesday, January 20.
While that is not impossible it is better to stick with the main reason Lorenzana gave which is that the UP system has been a safe harbor for enemies of the state. To those who scoff at that claim Lorenzana asks them too explain why UP students have turned up dead in clashes between the NPA and AFP.
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| https://www.rappler.com/nation/lorenzana-dares-up-explain-deaths-students-alongside-communists |
"I am open to dialogue with them. I am willing to talk to him (UP president Danilo Concepcion), pero sagutin muna nila kung bakit namatay ang mga taong ito kasama ang mga NPA (but they should first explain how these students died in the company of the New People's Army)," Lorenzana said in a press briefing on Wednesday, January 20.
He added, "UP should answer me truly why its students end up this way."
Lorenzana was referring to UP students who joined the New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and ended up dead after clashing with the military. Without presenting evidence, the Duterte government has claimed that there are recruitment efforts inside the university.
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| https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/fact-check/list-dead-captured-former-up-students-npa |
A list on the Facebook page "Armed Forces of the Philippines Information Exchange" names 27 people who are supposedly "UP [University of the Philippines] students who became NPA [New People's Army] (died or captured)."
The list was posted on Friday evening, January 22, and had at least 916 reactions, 58 comments, and 467 shares before it was taken down on Saturday morning. According to CrowdTangle data, there are at least 12 other Facebook pages that posted the same list on Friday.
This claim is false.
At least 8 names on the list are journalists, former government officials, lawyers, teachers, or entertainment personalities who are still alive and have not been captured as members of the NPA.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1386972/top-ph-military-official-claims-violations-of-anti-terror-law-going-on-in-up |
A top-ranking Philippine military official alleged that there are violations of the anti-terror law taking place at campuses of the University of the Philippines (UP).
Speaking to ABS CBN News Channel, Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., spokesperson of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, said some members of the UP community have been helping to prepare “for some activities in the underground” like anniversaries of the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Without presenting evidence at hand, he said they are also aware that some UP community members have been providing materials for propaganda “to destroy the government and bring down the government like printing materials for making bombs.”
“They’re all happening in the campuses…They’ve been doing that ever since,” he said.
While the official said they are not blaming the university itself, he said they are blaming “tools that they are using to exercise their academic freedom.”
“One of those tools…you freely allow your faculty who are members of the Communist Party of the Philippines to conduct this subtle training and recruitment of these students,” he said.
Parlade also cited an old speech of Dr. Jose Dalisay Jr., former UP vice president for public affairs, who “acknowledged that recruitment in the UP has been happening ever since.”
Let’s go back to those questions: Is UP a recruiting ground for rebels? The only sane and honest way of answering this is to say of course it is; it always was. It’s no big secret that rebellion and resistance are coded into UP’s DNA, because we have always encouraged critical thinking, which in turn encourages—at least for a while, until complacency sets in—an attitude of dissidence, of anti-authoritarianism, of rejection of the status quo. That’s how knowledge happens, that’s how it begins, as every scientist since Galileo has affirmed.
Sounds bad right? But then he goes on to say this:
True, since the 1940s, many of the leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (the old and the new) have come from UP, from the fascinating Lava brothers to the English major Joma Sison. But UP has also bred Presidents Laurel, Roxas, Macapagal, Marcos, and Macapagal-Arroyo. Ramon Magsaysay and Fidel Ramos both spent time in UP before moving elsewhere. We can add hundreds of senators, congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet secretaries, and icons of industry, the arts, the sciences and the professions to this list.
In other words, UP has attracted all kinds—communists and socialists, yes, but also capitalists, ultraconservative Catholics and born-again Christians, Rizalist cultists, military agents, the Ananda Marga, and Muslim separatists. Our 300,000 alumni can count saints as well as scoundrels, Jedi Masters and Sith Lords, democrats and demagogues.
Both Jedi Masters and Sith Lords come from the UP. That means the good and the bad. The communists and the boot-lickers. It seems very doubtful that Parlade understand the meaning of this speech or the meaning of intellectual freedom. While the UP is a center of recruitment for the CPP-NPA it's not as simple as the AFP and PNP demonstrating a show of force on campus to stop that. In fact it might spur more anti-government sentiment and thus more recruitment. But with all things we will see how it pans out.
We've seen a lot of inverted stories in the war against the insurgency like MILF terrorists helping out the AFP. This week the MNLF has declared the NPA persona-non-grata.
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| https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1883459/Zamboanga/Local-News/MNLF-declares-Abu-Sayyaf-bandits-persona-non-grata |
THE base commanders of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) under commander Ali Julkipli of Kalingalan Caluang, Sulu has declared the Abu Sayyaf bandits as persona non-grata in all of its camps and communities in the town.The declaration is contained in a peace covenant Julkipli and his base commanders signed together with the Marine Battalion Landing Team-7 (MBLT-7) in a ceremony Tuesday, January 19, at the MBLT-7 headquarters in Karungdong village, Kalingalan Caluang.
Colonel Hernanie Songano, 4th Marine Brigade commander, presided the activity.Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Olaso, MBLT-7 commander, said in a statement that the denouncement of the MNLF against the presence of Abu Sayyaf bandits in their respective camps and communities is a clear manifestation that MNLF, as Peace Inclined Armed Groups (PIAG), is one with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in establishing and maintaining peace and order in Kalingalan Caluang town.
After dozens, hundreds, of LGUs declaring the NPA persona-non-grata now the MNLF has done the same. Despite the fact that they are a terrorist group the AFP says this is a "clear manifestation" that they are a Peace Inclined Armed Group (PIAG). Do they not see the irony of that acronym as well as this declaration?
Another PIAG runs the BARMM. They are now entering their second year but they want a 3-year extension of the transition authority (BTA) so they can finalize everything.
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| https://www.rappler.com/nation/milf-seeking-bta-extension-not-for-power-success-peace-deal-murad-ebrahim |
Bangsamoro Interim Chief Minister Ahod "Al Haj Murad" Ebrahim made an impassioned push for a 3-year extension of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), saying it is primarily to ensure peace in Mindanao, and not a bid to stay in power.
"For us, it's not the power in the governance but it is the success of the implementation of the process of the peace agreement because it is the fruit of two decades of struggle," he said on Friday, January 22, during a virtual press conference.
"I myself, I started by joining the struggle when I was 19 years old. Now I am 71 years old so I have spent almost my whole life in the struggle," he continued.
Asked if MILF members, especially those with arms, will again resort to violence should Congress fail to grant a 3-year extension, Murad said he could not speculate on this but that there are surely "small groups" who could use the failure of a 3-year-old BTA to foment conflict.
"We can't say now if they will go back to war but we know there are still groups that are just waiting for failure because they will exploit on that," said Murad.
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| https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/12/04/20/3-year-extension-of-bangsamoro-transition-necessary-says-interior-minister |
Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) interior minister Naguib Sinarimbo said the "complex" transition process, which began in 2019 and was set to lapse in 2022, was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and had also faced budget delays in the past.
"There's a consensus between the national government and Bangsamoro government, as well as the peace panel, that the essential work will not be finished in the remaining period," he told ANC's "Matters of Fact."
There are many obligations that the national government has yet to fulfill, he added. Among them is the transfer of powers of national agencies to the Bangsamoro autonomous government.
The Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), which serves as the interim government, has yet to craft various codes such as the Election Code before parliamentary elections can be held in BARMM, said Sinarimbo, who is also the region's concurrent spokesperson.
To complete the governance structure of BARMM, it has to enact the Administrative Code, Bangsamoro Revenue Code, Bangsamoro Electoral Code, Bangsamoro Local Government Code, Bangsamoro Education Code, Bangsamoro Civil Service Code, and Bangsamoro law for indigenous peoples.
It has so far passed the Administrative Code and the Bangsamoro Development Plan. Under its normalization program, the BTA also needs to decommission 40,000 MILF combatants. Some 30 percent of the rebels have so far been decommissioned.
"Admittedly, the COVID-19 has distracted the national government. But it's not only peculiar to the national government. Our focus in strengthening the institution of the Bangsamoro autonomous government was also disturbed," he said in Filipino.
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