MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / June 20, 2013) – The youth group Anakbayan reiterated its demand for the government to expel the military from schools across the country after the United Nations reported detailed child abuses by government troops.
According to the report of Leila Zerrougui, United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, there were four verified instances last year when soldiers stationed themselves within the premises of public elementary schools, causing the closure of the latter for the several month.
“Soldiers deliberately position themselves within civilian population centers for a two-fold purpose: to turn the civilians into a human shield against the soldiers’ opponents, and to identify, harass, and assassinate known activists and other government critics in the area,” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan, said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
“We hope that the UN report’s will finally break the silence regarding violations of children and youth’s rights by the AFP and reinvigorate the demand for the removal of any and all military presence in campuses. The cases detailed in the report are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said
Last year, the Armed Forces held seminars in public schools all over the provinces of Isabela, Benguet, and Cebu, where they publicly accused activists of being communists and terrorists.
The practice, called red tagging by human rights organizations, has been decried as a tool to condition public opinion against activists who are in the military’s hit list or the Order of Battle.
Other violations of children and youth rights include: the attempted assassination of UP Diliman student activist Lordei Hina by a military agent, harassment and physical abuse of UP Diliman belonging to the so-called Porac 3 at the hands of the 7th Infantry Division, surveillance and threats by members of the Intelligence Service of the AFP against then-UP Student Regent Cleve Arguelles, the arrest and filing of fabricated charges against Anakbayan chairperson for Negros Christian Tuayon, and the infiltration of a confessed student who is ab agent of the military in a meeting of the League of Filipino Students to collect the names of their leaders.
Crisostomo called on the Commission on Higher Education, Department on Education, and Commission on Human Rights to immediately work on creating guarantees of keeping campuses military-free.
“A school that is military-free is one that is child-friendly,” he said.
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