AFP to hold talks with CHED, school officials to prevent student recruitment by communists
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will be holding dialogue with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and school officials to prevent students from being recruited by the communists in an alleged plot to oust President Rodrigo Duterte.
"We will make some actions (against the recruitment) on that and we will make sure that appropriate measures will be adopted to put everything in order," said AFP chief Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr.
On Wednesday, Assistant AFP Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Brig. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr named 18 colleges and universities in Metro Manila, including UP Diliman and UP Manila, where the communists are allegedly recruiting members.
Galvez said the military is "very worried" of the recruitment, which he said was initially based on captured rebel documents. He said the list was released to make the public aware.
"In one of the schools, we really saw violent depiction of activism and then there is some sort red line to seditious acts," said Galvez.
Galvez said CHED has admonished a UP department official "for supporting the ouster of President Duterte which is not right, I believe." He did not give details.
Galvez said the communists have been associating martial law declared by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the administration of Duterte.
"They ( students) are being brainwashed," said Galvez.
"They've (communists) conducted film showing pertaining to the (Marcos) dictatorship and then later on, they dramatized brutality in the military and (projected) the dictatorship is still looming under the administration of President Duterte," he said.
"They will create a broad coalition of students, youth, labor, peasants, and indigenous peoples so that they could attain a critical mass in for this October, November and culminating during their 50th anniversary this coming (December)," he said.
Earlier, AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Edgard Arevalo said schools identified by Parlade "have been possibly used as venues for arousing, organizing and mobilizing students by NPAs."
He said communist recruitment in some schools "are subject of continuing validation."
"Having said that, we (military) are firm in our position that some of the schools in that list have been, and widely known to have been used, as fora for communist recruitment," said Arevalo.
"Some of the other schools in the list are being targeted. The students are agitated initially towards activism; mobilize them as militants, and finally recruit them as regular NPA cadres and leaders to fill up the dwindling number of political cadres," said Arevalo. DMS
