Search You Are Here:Home → 2021 → January → 19 → Lumad students vow to defend UP, their sanctuary Lumad students vow to defend UP, their sanctuary January 19, 2021 MANILA – Eighteen-year-old Chricelyn Empong has spent the last three years of her life at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, which hosts their Lumad “bakwit” (evacuees) school. The Grade 12 student said that in 2015, she and her schoolmates were forced to leave their school, Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation Inc. (MISFI) Academy, in Kitaotao, Bukidnon due to series of harassment from the military. “Our school was tagged as a school run by communists. Our parents were labeled as supporters of the NPA [New People’s Army] and we were called children of the NPA,” Empong told