The state’s pronouncements of “terminating” the UP-DND Accord to allow the presence of police and military inside University of the Philippines campuses inside the country is an outright threat to the lives and rights of the youth and students.

The UP-DND Accord was born out of the student movement’s indignation against the military’s fascism during the Diliman Commune and thereafter all throughout the Marcos dictatorship. It served as both a protection for the academic freedom and democratic rights of students, as well as a reminder for how valantly the UP community resisted the human rights violations and crimes of the AFP and PNP.

Yet, even as the accord has been “in effect” for 3 decades since, it never stopped the state’s fascist troops from repeatedly undermining the rights and safety of students inside UP campuses. In June 2020, members of the PNP were caught on camera illegally entering UP Cebu premises to violently disperse a protest against the then Anti-Terror Bill. 8 were illegally arrested.

In several other instances, elements of the PNP and AFP were recorded surveilling and harassing students inside campuses—with some taking photos during rallies and others going as far as red-tagging student leaders
and mass-based organizations in seminars and classes.

This new development merely bodes of greater and more unabashed fascism against the youth and student movement.

The Duterte regime is hell-bent on targeting youth and student leaders in its campaign of terror and red-tagging. It cannot deny and is deeply distressed by the growing force of the youth and its capacity to propel to greater victories the revolutionary struggle of the Filipino workers and peasants. The regime is falling all over itself in trying to recruit and convince the youth, but seeing the ultimate futility of its efforts, resorts to terror tactics.

The state is more than aware of the class trait and ability of the youth, as propaganda workers and organizers, to shift the balance of power and be a decisive force in the people’s war. Indubitably, this is why Duterte and his fascist goons are on the clock in depriving them of democratic spaces in the cities and urban areas.

However, the only thing “undeniable” about the regime’s renewed aggression against the student movement is it will drive more and more of the youth to escape from the bonds of reactionary power and the threat it comes with, and ultimately arrive at the resolute decision to take up arms in the countryside and fight in the only way they know that’s left—alongside the New People’s Army.

Oust the tyrannic Duterte! Resist the fascist!