In a bid to set a new Guinness world record, 16,729 students from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines, today trooped to the UST Open Field to thank their teachers.

The attempt to break a world record was part of UST’s celebration of the National Teachers’ Month from September 5 to October 5, reports Rappler.

Next Thursday, the country will also celebrate National Teachers Day, paying tribute to the everyday heroes who have been helping mould the country’s future generation of leaders.

At the UST Open Field, the students spelled out: “My teacher is my hero!”

The Rotary International District 3000, Rotary Club of Perambalur New Gen, Roever Group of Educational Institutions based in India are the current holders of the largest human sentence record.

On August 10, 2016, they organised 16,550 participants to spell out “You can, you will” in celebration of the World Youth Day.

Curbing illegal drugs “holistically” is now an explicit mandate as provided by the Philippines government’s 2017-2022 Development Plan, released last week.

Chapter 18 of the Development Plan says that government targets the significant reduction of “all forms of criminality and illegal drugs” through a “holistic program that involves combating not only crimes but also the corruption that leads to the perpetuation of such acts”.

The portion on curbing illegal drugs in the PDP comes at a time that President Rodrigo Duterte revived community visits to warn drug users and pushers, called locally as Oplan Tokhang.

At the same time, the Philippine National Police Director General Roland dela Rosa has announced yesterday the launching of “Operation Double Barrel Reloaded”.

The operation is said to be a “kinder, gentler” approach for law enforcers to confront the illegal drug problem, dela Rosa told reporters.

More than 7000 suspected users and pushers have been reported killed since Duterte assumed office on 1 July  2016.

These killings are linked to the rise of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) that have been lambasted by critics — but shrugged off by Duterte supporters as not being the president’s policy —  that have criticised by international human rights groups, former heads of state, and the United Nations.

‘Suppressing the flow’
The Development Policy declares the country’s national anti-illegal drugs strategy included “suppressing the flow of illegal drugs supply through sustained law enforcement operations and reducing consumer demand for drugs and other substances”.

While the PDP mandated drug rehabilitation and massive preventive education and awareness programs, government is set to arrest and prosecute police personnel “involved in the use and trade of illegal drugs through counter-intelligence operations” prosecution.

Noting also the entry of Chinese, African and Mexican drug syndicates to the Philippines, government will also work with local and foreign law enforcement counterparts, as well as other international anti-drug organisations.

All these plans are part of a “holistic” approach to curb the drug problem, the PDP wrote. The plan also noted the data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency that there are around four million drug users, and that 47 percent of villages (barangays) nationwide are “drug-affected.”

“The government has therefore adopted a holistic approach in addressing criminality and illegal drugs,” the PDP says. “As these initiatives are expected to result in high incidence of apprehensions, the government must also upgrade its jail faiclities and substantially increase drug rehabilitation centers.”

The PDP also says that “respect for human rights should be upheld and observed at all times” in all of law enforcers’ activities against criminality.

Recently, the US-based Human Rights Watch published a chapter on the Philippines and observed that Duterte could be liable to a lawsuit before local courts and even the International Criminal Court, the latter for alleged “crimes against humanity”.

Narcotics board concern
The UN-aligned International Narcotics Control Board (ICNB), in a March 2 release of its annual report, indicated the board’s concern about extrajudicial killings.

The board called on the Philippines government to “issue an immediate and unequivocal condemnation and denunciation of extrajudicial actions against individuals suspected of involvement in the illicit drug trade or drug abuse; to put an immediate stop to such actions; and to ensure that the perpetrators of such acts are brought to justice in full observance of due process and the rule of law”.

Extrajudicial action “is fundamentally contrary to the provisions of… three international drug control conventions,” the ICNB report said.

The Malacañang called the HRW report “thoughtless and irresponsible” when the group’s report wrote the country had a “human rights calamity” given rising extrajudicial killings — allegedly perpetrated by police.

Such a “human rights calamity,” said Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella, may have been averted due to actions by government.

Abella cited the more than 1.1 million pushers and users who voluntarily surrendered and the construction of drug rehabilitation centers.

“Is it a human rights calamity when the sheer scope and magnitude of an emerging narco-state have been exposed?” Abella said.

‘Ransom scheme’
Dela Rosa recently formed within the PNP the Drug Enforcement Group (DEG) that replaced the old Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (AIDG) given the involvement of several of the latter group’s officers in a reported “Tokhang for ransom scheme”.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) indicated in its 2013 to 2016 figures that anti-illegal drug operations such as entrapments and arrests rose exponentially during the last six months of 2016 (the first six months of Duterte’s presidency).

In 2016, PDEA and partner law enforcement agencies had conducted 34,007 operations,  arrested 28,056 people, and filed 23,887 reports. These total figures are the highest over a four-year period (2013 to 2016).

Contrast the extended statements on illegal drugs 2017-2022 PDP to the 2011-2016 PDP provision on illegal drugs. The latter PDP wrote: “Modernise and upgrade facilities for law enforcers such as the PNP and the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) crime laboratories, forensic investigation facilities and equipment.

“Improve capacities of prosecutors and law enforcers particularly NBI agents in the investigation and prosecution of special cases involving economic or white-collar crimes such as money laundering, tax evasion, smuggling, human trafficking, violations of intellectual property rights and antitrust laws, illegal drugs and even cases involving extralegal killings and other human rights violations as well as violation of environmental laws.”

Jerome Villanueva is a graduate journalism student of the University of Santo Tomas. Assistant Professor Jeremaiah Opiniano supervises the undergraduate and graduate journalism degree programmes.

More 2017-2022 Philippine Development Plan stories

“Moving on without justice being served is not moving on—it’s giving up.”

This was the reminder of University of the Philippines professor and anti-Martial Law advocate Professor Crispin Maslog to University of Santo Tomas journalism students and faculty in a public forum held in Metro Manila at the weekend.

Dr Maslog, a former publisher of a weekly newspaper in Dumaguete that was closed down due to Martial Law between 1972 and 1981, urged millennials to open their eyes to the damages to the mass media the Marcos era had brought, even though they were not yet born at the time it happened.

“People without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture [are] like [trees] without roots,” Dr Maslog said, quoting Jamaican political leader and journalist Marcus Garvey.

“The mass media became very critical and Marcos clamped down on the mass media with his military forces,” he said.

“There were the years of protest, social unrest…The youth were taking to this stage to rally against corruption, that’s an old issue.”

Protesters and journalists were beaten and students were tortured, went missing, or found dead, Maslog added, citing Ricardo Manapat’s book on Martial Law.

The chairman of the Manila-based Asian Media Information and Communication Center also slammed the government for its poor education system and the mass media for misleading stories about Martial Law that caused ignorance of the people on the issue.

“It is not the students’ fault. It should be the government and the mass media that should be blamed for misleading information,” Dr Maslog said.

Likewise, Pacific Media Center director Professor David Robie emphasized truth as the core of journalism.

“Journalism is really about truth, any experience of truth, and establishing that truth,” Dr Robie said.

He was speaking about a digital strategy on human rights for journalists and cited the PMC’s own Asia Pacific Report of successful examples of independent campus based media.

Dr Robie added that it was important for journalists to achieve independence in their job of disseminating stories, noting that fact verification through multiple crosschecking and research is a fundamental part of a journalist’s job.

The forum titled Asia-Pacific Journalism for Filipinos Lessons by Seasoned Journalists and Journalism Educators was organised by the Faculty of Arts and Letters Department of Communication and Media Studies in partnership with the Journalism Graduate School, Research Center for Culture, Education and Social Issues-Research Interest Group on Communication.

Dr Robie also ran a workshop on Asia-Pacific reporting.

Maria Eden T. Dino reports for The Flame, official student publication of the University of Santo Tomas’ Faculty of Arts and Letters Department of Communication and Media Studies.

• Martial law amnesia
• Martial law and independent media forum

By a special correspondent in Manila

To mark the 44th anniversary of Martial Law in the Philippines today and to call to mind the atrocities it had inflicted on its victims, thousands of youth and students from across the country have joined street protests as part of the “Youth Action Day for Education, Peace, and Human Rights”.

In a news release, militant youth group Anakbayan said that thousands of university students walked out of their classes to join the protest actions.

Students from various universities in Metro Manila, Baguio City, Pampanga, Laguna, Cebu, Iloilo, Tacloban, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and other major regional centers walk out of their classes to press their demands for free education, peace talks, and respect for human rights.

“We are here in the streets to urge President Rodrigo Duterte to bring his promised ‘change’ to the education sector by taking decisive actions against tuition hikes,” Anakbayan national chairperson Vencer Crisostomo said.

Among Metro Manila campuses that held walkouts were the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) main campus in Sta. Mesa, UP Diliman, UP Manila, as well as several private schools in the University Belt in Manila.

The protest action included a caravan, with the assembly point at the University of Santo Tomas area, which was set to proceed to historic Mendiola Bridge near the Malacañan Palace.

Anakbayan condemned the Marcos dictatorship not only for its corruption and human rights violations but also for initiating the deregulation of the education sector resulting in a 5,000-7,000 percent hike in tuition from P700-P2,600 (up to NZ$75) a semester in 1982 to P40,000-80,000 (NZ$1145 – $2290) this year.

Duterte encourages activities
Earlier in the day, Malacañang said that President Duterte encouraged activities to mark the event as long as the protesters won’t cause inconvenience to the public.

“We understand some groups would mark the anniversary through public assembly,” Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement.

“The President encourages various activities to commemorate the occasion as long as they are peaceful and no public inconvenience or destruction of properties may ensue,” he added.

Andanar, meanwhile, reminded that September 21 was a regular working day.

At the University of Santo Tomas at the weekend, veteran communications professor Crispin Maslog gave a compelling presentation on “Martial law for the millenials”, showing some highlights of the injustices and atrocities under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos under Martial Law between 1972 and 1981.

He noted that of more than 400 people present, mostly student journalists and faculty, only half a dozen had been alive at the time of Martial Law.

Visiting professor David Robie, director of New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre, also gave a lecture on a “digital publishing strategy for human rights” featuring Asia Pacific Report.

GMA News Network

• Students urged never to forget Martial Law atrocities
• Crispin Maslog: A love-hate relationship with President Duterte
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