The Philippines post-Marcos had hope. Gone was the overstaying guest in Malacañang. When the people finally booted the ailing tyrant out of office in 1986, there was a palpable atmosphere of optimism. Political prisoners were initially freed, and President Corazon Aquino promised much-needed reforms in society. 

Yet, the same structural inequities and rights abuses from the Marcos regime persisted during her presidency. “The honeymoon period was short-lived because of rampant human rights violations brought about by paramilitary groups,” recounted Danilo Arao, a member of the activist circles in UP in the 1980s.

UP, then, as it is now, was branded as the hotbed for insurgency. Despite longtime Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile’s assurance in 1982 that state forces would avoid entering the university without permission from the UP administration, police and military personnel continuously violated the sanctity of the university.

The military, which, during the Marcos years, had an extremely fraught relationship with the UP community, became more and more entangled with the Aquino administration, owing to the precarity of the latter amid the countless coup attempts it had to face.  “Having been thrust to the presidency without any political experience, she came under extreme pressure from the military establishment, whose power was built by Marcos,” said UP Manila political scientist Bobby Tuazon in an interview with Bulatlat in 2009. 

Arao, now an associate professor at the UP Department of Journalism, recounted how the UP community—still reeling from the scars inflicted during the horrors of martial law—banded together once more and resolved to continue with the fight against the social ills still gripping the nation like poverty and a militarized society.

The final straw for the UP community came on the night of June 16, 1989, when Donato Continente, then a staffer of the Collegian and a member of the activist group Kabataan Para sa Demokrasya at Nasyonalismo (Kadena), was abducted by men in civilian clothes while he was on his way out of Vinzons Hall.

Continente’s orgmates at the Collegian remember him as timid and quiet—the type to stay silent until someone actually initiated a conversation with him. “But he is very kind and committed,” recounted Arao, then a news writer for the Collegian. “We did not know what happened to him, until he was surfaced by the military after he allegedly confessed to the murder of US Col. James Rowe.”

Continente languished in the National Bilibid Prison for 14 years, before eventually being freed in 2005 after the Supreme Court commuted his life sentence. Until the last, he maintained his innocence. “I was a victim of abduction and torture, forced to admit to a crime I did not commit,” he said in an interview with The Philippine Star on June 29, 2005.

Immediately after Continente’s arrest, the UP community stood firm in asserting the right of the university as a sanctuary from state forces, with which it had a bloody history during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship. “Filled with animosity,” said Francisco Nemenzo, then-Faculty Regent and one of the drafters of what came to be the 1989 UP-DND Accord, of the relationship between UP and the military back then. 

Recognizing the need for a codified set of rules on how state forces should operate within university premises from then on, the administration of then-UP President Jose Abueva sat down with defense officials to draft an agreement. In the final document, police and military personnel were explicitly barred from entering UP campuses without permission from UP officials—a response triggered by Continente’s brazen abduction inside UP Diliman.

Despite repeated violations by state forces since its enactment, the 1989 UP-DND Accord has fostered a more open and secure environment in UP campuses for open discourse, and with the demand of circumstances, protests and dissent. While the accord was still in effect, activists knew that they would be more secure inside the university from the rampant abuses perpetrated by the police and military, at least on paper. 

The accord’s hasty termination instantly sent a chilling message to the UP community. Informal settlers living on campus premises have already expressed their fears over threats of demolition and harassment from police personnel. The academic community, meanwhile, has repeatedly expressed grave concerns on how the presence of state forces would greatly hamper the free flow of discourse inside the university. 

For Nemenzo, academic freedom is the proverbial shield that protects those whose ideas and skills challenge the existing social order. Historically, UP has provided a trusty sanctuary for these people, allowing them to articulate—and subject to the acid test of discourse—their ideas and ideologies within its hallowed grounds, without fear of reprisal from the powers that be. 

Now, amidst the backdrop of shrinking democratic spaces and the outright crackdown on dissent, the Duterte government has decided to unilaterally abrogate the UP-DND Accord, opening the floodgates for potential abuses in the university and signaling the return to the dark days of the past. 

“By unilaterally abrogating—without provocation or consultation—the Abueva-Ramos agreement, the DND is reviving the atmosphere of distrust and animosity that gave rise to the Diliman Commune,” warned Nemenzo. ●

This article was originally published on February 7, 2021.