Students and faculty members of the University of the Philippines (UP) on Tuesday gathered to protest the termination of the decades-old agreement with the government banning police and military operations on campus.
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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 19) Vice President Leni Robredo, several lawmakers, and progressive youth groups denounced the Department of National Defense s decision to abrogate its three-decade agreement with the University of the Philippines that bars uniformed personnel from entering UP campuses without notifying school officials.
The Duterte administration s unilateral termination of the deal is clearly meant to silence the government s critics, Robredo said Tuesday, pointing out that the accord simply asks law enforcers to give notice to the university before conducting any security operations inside their campuses. This is neither a difficult nor onerous rule. Clearly, then, this is not a practical gesture, but a symbolic one. One designed to sow fear. One designed to discourage dissent. One designed to silence criticism, she said.
The scrapping of the agreement between the Department of National Defense (DND) and the University of the Philippines that prohibits police and military presence inside UP campuses was meant to “sow fear, discourage dissent, and silence criticism,” Vice President Leni Robredo said on Tuesday.
"DND, in its letter, has failed to show any overriding public interest to interfere with UP’s academic freedom. It did not show any clear and present danger which can limit a student or a professor’s civil liberty to freely think and express his or her view."
Senator Ronald Dela Rosa on Tuesday said the unilateral termination of the 1989 deal between the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Department of National Defense (DND) was already “long overdue.”