well thats just my opinion.

The Philippine Collegian, UP Diliman’s official student publication, expresses its solidarity with the students as they condemned the relentless murder of leftist activists perpetrated by the militarist state of Gloria Arroyo.

While reactionary forces were quick to dismiss the pelting of AFP chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon with eggs and mud by UP students as an “imprudent” act and a “gross disrespect to the human person,” the Collegian commends the same students for mustering the courage to stand up against the blatant lies trumpeted by the military as they washed their hands clean of the spate of political killings in the country.

The Collegian believes that nothing can be more shameful than simply letting go of such iniquity. It was in the spirit of condemning the military for the abduction of UP students Karen Empe? and Sherlyn Cadapan, both of whom remain missing to this date, that the pelting incident happened. It was in response to the unabated killing of leftists, now numbering to over 700, that Esperon was assailed as he was leaving the campus. Ultimately, it was in light of the gross human rights violations that continue to be committed by the fascist military that such “imprudent” act transpired.

As a campus publication espousing advocacy journalism, the Collegian is all too familiar with how this fascist military operates. Just recently, one of our photographers, Juan Paolo Verzosa, was harassed and threatened by no less than a ranking military official, Task Force Bulacan head Col. Rogelio Boac, in a Court of Appeals hearing on the abducted UP students. Boac forcibly took pictures of Verzosa and warned the latter against having the official’s pictures used by the opposition. Verbal assaults like “Kilala ko na ang hitsura mo,” “Sasapakin kita,” and “Iba ako magalit,” were hurled at our photographer, even while he was wearing his press ID during the whole episode.

The Collegian thus only deems it imperative that the students let the government know of their disgust at such wanton disregard for the people’s democratic rights. If there was anything shameful in that particular event, it was that the forum was headlined by the AFP’s fascist propaganda, and that bags, even those belonging to some professors, were inspected for “deadly weapons” supposedly to safeguard the participants. Surely, such acts are not in consonance with the collective struggle of the students against repression, within and outside of the university.

It is also in this light that the Collegian similarly condemns the continued repression of the publication by the UP administration. To date, the UP admin has yet to recognize the autonomy of the publication, and has doggedly refused to release the Collegian’s funds, thus paralyzing its operations. We therefore urge all students to join us in our fight against this apparent attack to campus press freedom, and to the right of UP students to an independent campus publication.

It is so easy to throw back barbs at the activists who threw eggs at Esperon in the form of condemnation and outright indignation, as one’s sense of academic decorum is disturbed by the very vivid and graphic activity.

However, the condemnation can dangerously morph into uncalled-for anti-communist hysteria and McCarthyist red-baiting, as is being done by Alex Magno and his friends in the seats of power in Malacanang. In his intolerant column supposedly written in defense of free speech and intellectual tolerance in the university, he equates the incident to fascism and “communist terrorism”. Unfortunately, this only parrots and tows the military’s dangerous –and fallacious–reasoning that unarmed activists are no different from their NPA targets.

Equally dangerous is the opinion that activists must have deserved being targets as they behave “badly”. This is not a case of fighting fire with fire. The AFP has guns. Students have only eggs and words. Esperon and his men have outrightly taken part in electoral fraud and have blatantly tolerated the abduction, torture and killings of unarmed civilians. Nothing can be more shameful than simply letting go of such iniquity. The activist students certainly put that difference in power in a graphic light with the pelting that happened.

This is the same General Esperon, mentioned a few times in the Hello Garci tapes, which is the reason he is also called a Hello Garci general. He is one among a few generals who helped in the cheating for Gloria in the 2004 elections. You can verify that by studying the contents of the Hello Garci tapes. There was a new book launched last Monday at the UP College of Law called FRAUD which documents the cheating in the 2004 elections.

This is the same General Esperon, who has made public in several instances his total absence for respect for the peace process. Did he not welcome with open arms “President” Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s declaration of “all-out war” against the Left, and the accompanying grant of an additional P1-billion budget for state forces to use in the counter-”insurgency” campaign?

The “all-out-war” declared by Arroyo, by the way, is not specifically against the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) — which as organizations are engaged in armed struggle with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) even as it strives to talk peace with its foe. It is against the Left — a broad term which can be taken to include legal cause-oriented organizations like the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) and progressive party-list groups like Bayan Muna or even progressive individuals that earned the ire of the leading clique in power. There is no distinction between guerrillas and unarmed activists then.

This is the same General Esperon who continues to hide the Mayuga report. Is he scared that the Mayuga report will expose his role in Arroyo’s massive cheating, and that he got his job not because of merit, but because of patronage? Yet he is being fast tracked in promotion over more senior staff in the AFP.

This is the General Esperon, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff who said at the Melo Commissin that the military and Palparan are not the ones who committed the more than 750 extrajudicial killings of activists and civilians. Instead he was saying that the Left themselves are killing their members. He did not lift even a single finger to touch Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, Jr. while the latter was calling Karen and Sherlyn members of the NPA.

With that, he has dismissed the charge that the two UP lady students, Karen Empeño and Sheylyn Calapan, (abducted by the military in Hagonoy, Bulacan 2 months ago and still missing) and effectively saying that they were really not abducted by the military. Some of those students who attended that forum were friends of Karen and Sherylyn and you can very well imagine how they felt about it. Yet, despite these, the students have had decorum enough to throw only eggs.###

Justified Imprudence
Kenneth Guda

They are such a polite lot, those worthy scholars of the people under the Association of Political Science Majors or APSM. Angered by militant students’ egg- and muck-throwing of Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, these idealistic (read: naive, naive!) studes came up with a statement demanding that the UP student council and their grim-and-determined fellows from Vinzons apologize to them and the public from the incident. They specifically asked council chair Paolo Alfonso to publicly apologize “for his actions which were subsequently misconstrued as the general behavior of the UP studentry by the greater public.”

What the heck are those UP political science professors teaching these kids?

First, let us state the obvious: The egg- and muck-throwing happened after the forum, after Esperon had left Claro M. Recto hall. If it happened while Esperon was speaking in the forum, there would have been much reason in APSM demanding apology from Alfonso, for Esperon was their responsibility as an invited speaker. He is a guest, after all. We are all familiar with the concept of Pinoy hospitality, and the APSM kids are obviously not beyond practicing this cultural relic of our feudal past.

Should we continue to open our doors to all people, even those of undesirable character, nevermind that known cheats and killers would understandably not expect people to welcome them in their homes? Or in this case, nevermind that considering the humongous flak the military is getting because of its horrible human rights record Esperon should have expected such incidents wherever he goes in the country? Or nevermind that government officials and public figures not nearly as controversial as Esperon should expect cries — or in this case, eggs — of indignation to be thrown their way wherever they go for sticking to a much-hated and discredited regime as Arroyo’s?

There are actually similar situations where controversial VIPs grace events — the National Press Club’s rigodon night, for one — where they know they will be humiliated. In the case of Esperon’s visit to UP, he should have expected to be humilitated, if only for the abduction and continued detention of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño. I guess, having a thick face gets in the way of those realizations.

What those super-sensitive APSM kids must realize is that they are in UP, the so-called hotbed of radicalism, of impertinence and imprudence. Bold fraternity men with placards to boot run around the campus naked, for chrissakes! Almost every moral norm has been violated in UP, particularly in Sunken Garden and Lagoon, and they are concerned about a simple egg-throwing! They should ask their fellow students in the History department to tell them about the First Quarter Storm of 1970, when militant kids their age stormed Batasan during Marcos’s state of the nation address and threw an effigy right at the would-be dictator’s feet, sparking a quarter-long series of huge protests and confrontations that would be cited as the finest hour of the Philippine student movement. They should ask about the so-called Diliman Commune in 1971, that, while not exactly the type of commune American and European hippies had during the Sexual Revolution, had its share of impetinence with students taking over the campus, renaming Palma Hall as Sison Hall, etc., and playing over DZUP tapes of B-move actress Dovie Beams having sex with Marcos.

It is way, way beyond any expectations of hospitality and politeness to feel offended when Esperon gets “egged” after he steps out of the conference room.

But what is less obvious but nevertheless must be pointed out to these kids — and especially the administration officials so keen on using APSM to attack the militants — is that the armed conflict that is raging all over the country can never be settled by mere talk. It is the height of naivete to claim that their forum was an “example of the meeting of divergent sides”. APSM supposedly prides itself for making space “where both ends of the political spectrum meet”, but there is no such space. I was once a writer for human rights group Karapatan, and I heard so many, many times the stories of human rights workers engaging the military in a dialogue, asking them to investigate this or that case, or politely pleading to them to pull out of areas where human rights violations occur. Very, very seldom do these dialogues bear fruit. Often these dialogues occur to the detriment of the very ones engaged in dialogue — the human rights advocates, the families of the victims, who henceforth become targets of the attacks they so passionately raised their voices against.

They only have to know the story of Eden Marcellana, human rights worker, and Eddie Gumanoy, peasant leader. They, too, raised their voices. They used words to expose the inequities that they witness. Eden, according to those she worked with, had an encyclopedic knowledge of human rights cases, and was especially skillful with negotiations with the military whenever they go to fact finding missions. She held countless dialogues with Jovito Palparan and his murderous cabal, in Mindoro, in Quezon, in Batangas. Her fate is a testament to how the military and the state settle arguments. They can’t argue with her, but they won the argument by pelting her body with bullets.

The militant students only pelted Esperon with eggs and muck, instead of grenades, which some of their youthful counterparts in Palestine or Iran would probably choose. The kids are understandably angry. The question in my mind, though, is why are those other kids in the APSM not.