Keep off the youth

I WAS looking at my notes for a second part on “brainwashing” when this press release came in my e-mail inbox. It may have started in a Manila-located state university — the Polytechnic University of the Philippines — but make no mistake, this witch hunt of this administration against the youth sets a dangerous precedent.

Here in Northern Mindanao, police regional director Brig. Gen. Rafael Santiago is quick to dance to the tune despite his hefty disposition. He has ordered his officers to spy on schools to supposedly keep the “recruiters” of the Maoist New People’s Army at bay.

Let me remind the President that it would do him well if he keeps off the future of this Republic. This is the last sector in the society he should be constricting and repressing because as our contemporary history teaches us, this kind of witch hunt doesn’t sit well with critical thinking and enlightened youth.

Let me remind him further that I agree to a line in his most recent coherent and sane speech, that “we are our worst enemy.” I suggest he take a look at a mirror because he has become the biggest enemy to himself and to this Republic.

Here’s the full text of the press release from Shara Mae Landicho and Sean Thakur. Please do read on.

“Student activists of Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (Spark) denounced the mandatory drug testing held at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP). They say that drug tests placed hundreds of students in the crosshairs of the state-sponsored death squads.

“They cautioned policymakers and implementors that they may be held accountable for excesses and atrocities committed during and after the tests.

“The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Thursday reported that they administered eight hundred drug tests to out of the more than thirty-five thousand students of the state university in its Sta. Mesa campus.

“The group claimed that the exercise was ‘a major cause of worry for the youth are equally placed in peril between the law enforcers and peddlers of illegal substances considering the larger context where the Duterte administration has been waging an unsuccessful and bloody war on drugs since ascending to power in 2016.

“Spark warned that student bodies across the country will not hesitate to hold the Commission on Higher Education (Ched), PUP president Emmanuel de Guzman and the PNP accountable ‘if even a single drop of blood of a PUP student is spilled’ in police operations following the tests.

“‘The government must immediately cease promoting a discriminatory, stigmatizing and skewed approach to solving the drug problem. This, on top of their bloodied credentials and their present fixation, to intrude in campus affairs,’ said Spark spokesperson, Shara Mae Landicho.

“Landicho averred that drug tests are not in line with the supposed objective of drug prevention but the promotion of a healthy lifestyle but the persecution of its victims.

“PNP reports that they have tallied six thousand six hundred sixty drug-related deaths from July 2016 to June 2019 or eighteen deaths a month. In December last year, Commission on Human Rights chairperson Chito Gascon estimates that the death toll could be as high as twenty-seven thousand.

“For Sean Thakur, chairperson of the University Student Council of the University of the Philippines Diliman, ‘Three years has passed since Oplan Tokhang was unleashed and no less than the president has already admitted that their approach has failed to curb the drug menace and now they seek to spread the bloody frenzy within academic institutions.

“He adds that enforced through the Ched Memorandum 18, the mandatory drug testing in universities ‘only legitimizes such police operations in campuses and threaten institutions that should always exhibit academic freedom.’

“The activists insist that for as long as the conditions of poverty, inequality and corruption among law enforcers persists, illegal drugs will be an enticing option economically and psychologically.

“Policymakers and the police are looking in the opposite direction. They shall find more success if they genuinely address social, structural injustices and quit being utak-pulbura (having a violent mindset), he adds.

“The group called likewise called on the parents of PUP students to add their voices to the opposition to the mandatory drug tests policy.”

Brainwashing

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” — Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American philosopher (Jan. 6, 1883-April 10, 1931)

I HAVE read the word “brainwashing” countless times in my favorite cloak-and-dagger novels — books like the Jason Bourne trilogy and The Manchurian Candidate. Yet, this word has been bandied about at the Senate hearing lately like it is some sort of verified psychological procedure. It is not.

Merriam-Webster defines the word as “a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, religious beliefs, and attitudes to accept contrasting regimented ideas.” With this definition, it is not hard to understand where the shining new senator is coming from.

“Alam niyo mahirap talaga ma-reverse yan kung talagang malalim na ang brainwashing na natanggap ng isang bata,” the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Sen. Ronald dela Rosa as saying last week.

But how exactly does brainwashing work? Where and when was it first used? If there was indeed a successful “forcible indoctrination,” how can we fight against it? From what dela Rosa has been mumbling at the halls of the Senate, I can only surmise that this is an alarming occurrence that should be stopped. Immediately!

According to Julia Layton, a lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver, brainwashing was first heard off during the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, when Korean and Chinese captors supposedly brainwashed American prisoners of war. Several prisoners reportedly confessed to crimes they did not commit and pledged allegiance to communism by the end of their captivity.

The Americans were so intrigued by the idea that they sent Edward Hunter, an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency, to investigate the phenomenon.

“The intent is to change a mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet — a human-robot — without the atrocity being visible from the outside. The aim is to create a mechanism in flesh and blood, with new beliefs and new thought processes inserted into a captive body. What that amounts to is the search for a slave race that, unlike the slaves of olden times, can be trusted never to revolt, always to be amenable to orders, like an insect to its instincts,” Hunter wrote on his report.

To cause the drastic change of someone’s way of thinking without the person’s consent, Layton added, a combination of severe compliance method, persuasion approach, and education method will have to be employed in an extended period of time.

“Because brainwashing is such an invasive form of influence, it requires the complete isolation and dependency of the subject, which is why you mostly hear of brainwashing occurring in prison camps or totalist cults,” wrote Layton.

However, Layton pointed out that of the more than 20,000 American prisoners held in socialist countries during that war, only 21 refused to come back to the United States and pledge allegiance to communism.

Twenty-one of 20,000 American prisoners is a minuscule 0.1050 percent. That amount of “conversion” rate plus the effort and time spent on brainwashing the American prisoners can hardly be called cost-efficient.

With this historical context of brainwashing, is the senator positing then that progressive youth organizations like League of Filipino Students, Anakbayan, and Student Christian Movement of the Philippines herded hordes of young people into concentration camps for months at a time? If they did, as the senator is suggesting that the situation is “talagang malalim,” wouldn’t we be able to locate at least one of these camps? Please do bear in mind that these organizations have had tens of thousands of members over the years.

Let’s say for the sake of humoring the senator, that these youngsters have been “forcibly indoctrinated.” How should we fight it? I suggest two things to stop being brainwashed.

First, don’t believe all that you read. Like what American humorist George Carlin said in one of his skits: “Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.”

Second, don’t buy into fear or scare tactics. Nazi leader Hermann Göring once said: “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

I admit I was a little perturbed when I watched the Senate hearing last week of a crying mother of one youngster who was allegedly kidnapped by Anakbayan and was reportedly brainwashed. It was dramatic. But the fact of the matter is, you do not own your children. They are not like some chattels which you can dictate its outcome. These are people who have futures which we, the parents, do not belong to. Don’t deter them from choosing a path you were afraid or unaware of when you were young. You had your chance. It is their time now.

Like, ultimately, your children will have to choose their own paths in this world.

Talking of choice, which is what joining an organization really is, I remember the movie The Matrix. At the start of The Matrix trilogy, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) offers Neo/Henderson (Keanu Reeves) two pills before they could go about the premise of what the matrix was all about. The pills were colored blue and red.

If Neo chooses the blue pill, he would go back to being comfortable with the false security the matrix offers. If he chooses the red pill, Neo would be made aware of the truth of the world. It would be a difficult and painful choice. Since the truth, at least in the movie, is that humans are mentally trapped and placated within the matrix so they can continue to produce energy for the alien overlord.

The choice of the youth to choose either the red pill or the blue pill is entirely up to them. Again, you do not own your children. In conclusion, I dare ask the question: Who is brainwashing who in our Republic these days? Pfft.

‘Invitation’

I FIRST met Kristine Lim at one of the “choke points” during a public transport strike. I was writing for another daily newspaper then and was covering the nationwide strike. She was wearing her Liceo de Cagayan uniform while holding a placard calling for the repeal of the Oil Deregulation Law.

To the best of my knowledge, she used to be a street parliamentarian until she went back to finishing her nursing degree shortly after getting married and having children. She has always been here in the city’s streets voicing the cause of the marginalized and disenfranchised.

Kristin used to be the station manager of “Radyo Lumad” under the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines here in Northern Mindanao. Like my wife, son, and I, she has been red-tagged on a one-page flyer which was distributed at a hotel here in the city on Feb. 26.

On Saturday evening, an officer from the Army’s 1st Special Forces Battalion, wearing civilian clothes, went to Kristine’s residence in Damilag, Bukidnon to “invite” her to their camp in Bukidnon for her to share her “knowledge of the left.” With this officer was a 6×6 Army truck full of soldiers armed to the teeth.

The officer neither gave a reason for the “invitation” nor showed any warrant or legal documents.

Of course, Kristine did not consent. Like many others, she knew that this was the very same tactic that the very same battalion used to “capture” Gloria Jandayan and Gleceria Balangiao who were presented as supposed New People’s Army combatants who surrendered to the folds of the law. Jandayan has been released but Balangiao, unfortunately, is still being held captive as an insurgent.

The next day, Sunday, the same officer, with the 6×6 and soldiers armed to the teeth in tow, returned to Kristine’s home. This time, they brought members of the barangay council to convince her to go with the soldiers to their camp.

However, Kristine stood her ground and told the punong barangay that she has the right to dismiss the “invitation” since there were no legal documents presented to her compelling her to do so.

The punong barangay concurred with Kristine and advised the soldiers that they can ask her constituent for dialogue at their barangay hall and not the military camp. She also claimed her right for legal representation if and when that dialogue ever happens.

This incident sends a chilling effect to all libertarians and human rights advocates across the country. It is good that Kristine knows her rights as a Filipino citizen. However, the same thing could not be said of the thousands of indigenous people, subsistence farmers, fisherfolk, and informal settlers.

Since December 2017, the rights watchdog Karapatan documented some 126 victims of extrajudicial killings and 235 cases of frustrated EJKs — 1,202 victims of illegal arrest, 272 of them detained; and 426,590 victims of forced evacuation.

Since when has it been illegal to be a voice for the voiceless? Even with martial law declared in the entire island, civilian authority remains supreme over the military.

The armed-appendage of the state would do well to understand that unarmed dissent is not a crime. In fact, it is the cornerstone of every fledgling democracy on planet earth. This is even enshrined in our Constitution. Look it up so you can learn a thing or two about how democracy works.

Hell, even the Communist Party of the Philippines has been declared legal by no less than a former military general who became a President. My editor-in-chief told a brigadier general during a dialogue not too long ago, “There is no such thing as a thought crime.”

Kristine is safe now somewhere in the city. But she is expecting a trumped-up case against her in the near future just as what happened to other people “invited” by the military. Pfft.