Keep off the teachers

IT always amazes me how our uniformed services manage to target unarmed groups and tag them as threats to the Republic.

Year in and year out, we see dissenting groups being branded as either communist legal fronts or sympathizers of the revolution. They seem to be devoid of the capacity to distinguish legitimate dissent and armed insurgency.

A news report from ABS-CBN online news on Sunday quoted Joselyn Martinez, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) national chairperson, as saying that police officers went to their school in Malabon on Thursday to ask the school principal for the names of members of ACT.

On Sunday, a copy of the supposed order to inventory members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) with the signature of a Chief Insp. Rexson Layug of the Manila Police District Intelligence, circulated on Facebook.

In the same news article, National Capital Region Police Office Director Guillermo Eleazar has denied ordering the “school visits.” However, the intelligence chief of the Zambales provincial police confirmed the memo on the ACT is genuine and that they were “just following orders.”

First, the memo in direct violation of the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers. Second, the right of every citizen of the Republic to self-organization, freedom of expression and assembly, and the right to privacy are enshrined and guaranteed in our Constitution. Well, that is unless Congress changed it over the New Year.

Third, a simple Google search would show you that ACT is a listed organization with the Securities and Exchange Commission plus it is recognized by both the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Education. So, what’s next — an inventory of people inside CSC and Deped who recognize the legitimacy of ACT?

What’s the matter? Aren’t you contented of using public schools in hinterlands as de facto camps of paramilitary and soldiers? Now, you’re going after teachers, too?

In a statement, ACT slammed the order to inventory their members as part of the Duterte administration’s grand fascist scheme to suppress all forms of opposition.

I couldn’t agree more. Right off the bat, this administration has been consistent in stifling legitimate dissent. It has been using Marcosian means to silence anybody who has grown cojones to stand up against it.

If you can’t lay your hands off the public schools in the boondocks, at least, keep off the public teachers. Remember, their wage increases were postponed because Digong Dada thought it best to increase your salaries first.

You are all government workers. You share a common goal. You have sworn to serve and protect the Republic. So, I’d like to remind you that you should serve and protect the people not just a certain sector of powerful people.

As I have posted on my Facebook wall a week ago: I do not hope for government workers to do their job. I expect it.

Asserting our rights

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1776 US Declaration of Independence

THE Universal Declaration of Human Rights is as relevant and important today as it was when it was adopted by 48 countries, the Philippines included, 70 years ago yesterday.

Human rights watchdog Karapatan has documented that from May 23, 2017, to November this year, there were 88 victims of political killings, 128 cases of frustrated killings, and 186 victims of illegal arrests and detention in Mindanao alone.

On Sunday, a group of farmers and indigenous people from Bukidnon, numbering to about 2,000, were held up by the armed police at Patpat, Malaybalay in Bukidnon. The contingent was on its way to the city to commemorate the 70th Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Not to be deterred, the contingent staged a picket rally where they were held, and the police released them 30 minutes after.

One of the delegates observed that as soon as they were returning to their buses, the police officers started dismantling their supposed checkpoint.

“Clearly, the holding point was set up waiting only for the delegates,” reports one of the delegates.

The United Nations’ Human Rights Commission, through its special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, has warned that the ongoing militarization of Mindanao will have a massive and potentially irreversible impact on the human rights of its tribal communities.

“We urge the Philippines to observe its obligations under international law to protect the human rights of indigenous peoples, including in the context of armed conflict. The authorities must ensure that all human rights abuses are halted and that there are justice and accountability for past attacks,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, reported to the UN’s human rights high commissioner last year.

The figures are alarming in that since last year, there have been 2,500 lumad people displaced, and the number is rising. With yet another extension of martial rule across the island, these figures will most definitely rise some more.

The UDHR is not just some mundane covenant of 48 countries. It is a document that encapsulates the age-old question, What makes one human? We must continue to assert this declaration as this administration continues to trample the very essence of what makes us humans.

Just as libertarians before us fought tooth and nail to assert their rights for a morally upright society, it is incumbent on us to take the cudgels once again during these dark days of our country.

Regulating the fourth estate

THE Presidential Task Force for Media Security, in all its wisdom and intelligence, is pushing for a “Magna Carta” for media workers supposedly to uplift the living conditions of journalists in the country.

Its main stooge, Undersecretary Joel Egco, is set to consult “various legitimate media partners.”

Under the proposed Magna Carta, media personalities will have to take an exam every six months to calibrate their qualification of whether the practitioner belongs to a managerial position or to a corresponding salary level or grade equivalent to that of government.

“Question is, would this be automatic once passed? This would still depend on private media owners but with the qualifying exam, journalist can now be qualified as a level 1, 2 or 3 journalists and depending on the vacant position to be applied, the journalist can now, for example, apply for a reportorial position which is level 2 while obtaining a level 1 qualification,” A Baguio-based news daily quoted Egco as saying last Thursday.

The Philippine Press Institute’s executive director Ariel Sebellino is opposing Magna Carta for media workers.

“Levelling has nothing to do with the quality of journalism. We should care for the following:  Welfare and protection, ethical practice, and truth-telling,” he posted on his wall.

The supposed Magna Carta for media workers is nothing more than government meddling into the independence of the press.

I urge these former journalists and news readers who are now in government service to address the media killings rather than regulating the industry it clearly doesn’t have an inkling on.

The other night, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines has not only gave a flat no, it enjoins other media entities to join it in opposing this threat to the independence of the fourth state and freedom of expression in general.

I would like to share with you NUJP’s statement in full here. Please do read on.

NUJP rejects PTFOMS proposal to regulate press through ‘Magna Carta’ (July 22, 2018)

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines rejects outright the proposal of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security to regulate the profession in the guise of a “Magna Carta” and urge all colleagues as well as media owners to unite in opposing this clear threat to freedom of the press and of expression.

(A Baguio daily) quoted PTFOMS Executive Director Joel Egco as saying the proposed measure would seek to professionalize journalism through qualifying and classifying exams.

“If you want to become a media personality, you will have to take an exam every six months to assess your qualification which would set either a managerial position or a corresponding salary level or grade equivalent to that of government,” Egco was quoted as saying.

This is, in fact, not the first time the idea of regulating, even licensing, journalists have been proposed. And the NUJP, along with other media and free expression advocates, has consistently opposed and thwarted all such attempts.

We do not question the intent of Usec Egco, himself a former colleague.

But the proposed “Magna Carta,” which goes so far as to set salary grades depending on “competency,” is fraught with danger, not least of all allowing government to determine who can or cannot be a journalist, which is totally anathema to a profession that can thrive only in independence.

We maintain that journalism is an extension of freedom of expression and serves the people’s sacrosanct right to the information they need to make decisions about their individual and collective lives.

The Magna Carta would also infringe on the rights of media owners and managers to determine who to employ.

We cannot allow the government – this or any other – the opportunity to meddle in any way not only in the profession that serves as the people’s watchdog against official abuse but in any other matter that may endanger freedom of the press and of expression, and the people’s sacred right to know.

National Directorate, hotline: +639175155991