On red-tagging, censorship, and book banning in Philippine university libraries
Jecko Sanjorjo
In March 2019, Duterte resolutely announced the permanent suspension of peace talks between the government and the CPP-NPA (Roque). Then, in September 2021, universities from the Cordillera Administrative Region purged their libraries of books and documents deemed “subversive” and communist in nature. This came after a memorandum issued by the Commission on Higher Education-CAR which expressed and encouraged the participation of universities and libraries in the “whole-of-nation” approach of the NTF-ELCAC in their efforts to combat communist rebellion and insurgencies. The events were met with strong criticism from various groups, but most especially the academe, which effectively resurfaced the contentious matter of academic freedom in the Philippines.
The first reported instance of this book-purging is in Kalinga State University where books and documents on peace negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) were pulled out after a group of police and soldiers inspected the university library on September 1, 2021. Among the texts removed from the library are documents signed between the government and the NDFP during previous and historical peace negotiations, among several other NDFP documents. According to Evangeline Cabello, KSU’s chief librarian, she decided to remove the documents to “protect [the students] from being recruited to join communist groups,” adding that she acted voluntarily and thought that some not should have been removed. Moreover, she simply put the books “somewhere else” and had not turned them over to authorities (Subingsubing and Visaya).
The Isabela State University followed this similar step but showed more resolution and support for the memorandum. ISU president Riemar Aquino directed the main campus and ten others in the province to pull out not only handbooks from the NDFP but also works by CPP founder Jose Maria Sison. Echoing what had been expressed by KSU’s chief librarian, Aquino said that the decision to ban the books is part of the university’s commitment to “protect the university and its students from the harm that the communists might inflict” and that students “should not be exposed to anything that will destroy their future.” Unlike KSU, ISU turned over books and documents to Dennis Godfrey Gammad, the regional director of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, who claimed that “the books you read become part of you. Therefore, commitment and accountabilities lie in every page you read” (Visaya).
It is important to recognize the particular place of the events involving the book-purging of the NDFP documents and books in the greater contexts of the government’s campaign and efforts to end local communism and armed conflict — which is quite literally what the NTF-ELCAC stands for: National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
As the government’s arm and prime solution to end armed conflict in the country, the task force has been the center of much controversy since its creation. This primarily comes from the institution’s commitments which are often carried over in various rights violations committed by its agents and leaders — one easily remembers how former spokesperson Lt. Gen. Antonio Perlade shamelessly red-tagged community pantry initiator Ana Patricia Non (Torres).
On the level of legislation, the passing of the Anti-Terror Law, whose legal provisions on and definition of “terrorism” gives legal leeway to the rampant impunity of transgressions and violence committed to any suspected communists and insurgents in the country, including human rights activists, indigenous peoples, and people from the academe (Amnesty International). These would include: the nine Tumandok leaders killed and 17 others arrested in a military operation done in the early morning last December 2020 (Indigenous Peoples Rights International); the continuous state harassment and violence enacted on various Lumad communities, where they are bombed, raided, and displaced (Diño); the unsubstantiated “rescue operation” which resulted in the arrest of Lumad students and teacher-volunteers in a retreat house in the University of San Carlos (Sitchon; Luna); and the abrogation of the UP-DND Accord, which has effectively placed the university and its constituents at open risk and danger. So many lives have been lost, too: the New Bataan 5, which includes Lumad teacher Chad Booc who perished with four others February last year (UPLB Perspective); the Bloody Sunday Massacre which killed at least nine lives and the several more that has carried over in the present Marcos administration, including the deaths of Ericson Acosta, and Joseph Jimenez (Amnesty International), as well as Wilma and Benita Tiamzon with eight others (Bolledo). All these in a country that constitutionally recognizes the legality of communism, or any political parties for that matter.
It is not difficult to surmise the premises and ideologies held by the NTF-ELCAC and those who have willingly participated in their efforts. It is clear which of the government’s sentiments the universities are complicit in: that exposure to “subversive” materials affects individual consciousness and that they serve as conduits of insurgent ideologies that result in the participation of the youth in the armed struggle. This is quite explicit in the memorandum itself, which writes, “It is our moral consciousness not to allow our youth to be engrained with peace-detrimental ideologies that could turn them as subversive and become communist-terrorist. It is public knowledge that these materials are also used in the infiltration and recruitment of students in our respective institutions’’ (de Vera). Given the legality of communism, the NTF-ELCAC and CHED-CAR remain burdened to provide proof of why reading books on communism should be illegal.
One of the strongest criticisms have come from the University Library Council of the University of the Philippines whose position supports the view that the book-purgings performed curtail academic freedom, and is a futile solution to the issues the NTF-ELCAC is supposedly solving. In their public statement, the Council writes:
Book purges are practiced by dictatorships, not democracies; and inevitably, book purges prove futile, as those who banned the Noli and Fili for being subversive equally realized. Knowledge advances not by the exclusion of ideas, but by intellectual inquiry and scientific practice. Insurgencies are contained by addressing their root causes, not by banning books that explain how and why they happen. (UP Media and Public Relations Office)
The premise of academic freedom lies in the notion that any individual or institution should freely inquire, discuss, and formulate solutions to practical and abstract problems without external interference, restrictions, and control, whether legal, political, or governmental (Britannica). It is clear that to purge libraries of any material regardless of their contents and ideas is to impose a certain political will by limiting access to what one can and cannot read in this exercise of freedom. The free flow and access of information is crucial to this form of freedom. What happens, then, when people are prevented from reading texts that could better help them understand their social and economic situations?
The book purging done at CAR is not historically unique. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the efforts done by past dictatorships elsewhere (Boragay). The May 1933 book burning under Nazi Germany is perhaps the often-cited historical precedent to any subsequent book purging across the world. Hitler’s ultra-authoritarianism “aimed to synchronize professional and cultural organizations with Nazi ideology and policy” by burning books deemed “subversive,” Left-wing, and “un-German” — that is, critical of the dominant racist and fascist ideology (the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Given this single historical precedent, the implications of subsequent purgings are clear: the goal is to further create a condition of ignorance and subservience by a public already susceptible and victimized by various social, political, and economic injustices. And as a tactic, its intended effects are simple but harrowing: stringent control and the curtailment of freedoms by censoring truth, both of which have worsened under the present administration, as can also be seen by the proliferation of fake news and attacks on journalists.
The particular place of the book purging in the long line of other government efforts to suppress and “solve” armed conflict emphasizes just how tactless the NTF-ELCAC really is, and how in the long run the other, often violent, measures only serve to further justify and legitimize armed conflict. The brutal reality that violence and oppression are at the underbelly of these discourses should prove strongly why this issue is of utmost importance: the primary and immediate casualty is actual human lives. The censorship and the limitations the purging imposes on an individual’s right to inquire and study are doubly consequential, as already implied above, to certain identities whose material conditions and situations are already worsened by history and continued structural inequities and inequalities. This creates palpable exigencies as to why we must argue against, and indeed resist, these all-too-familiar state attacks, for it shall also paradoxically create more tensions and give more cause to the conflict the government itself deems “peace-detrimental” and a nuisance.
No one should be surprised that once the armed struggle is meted out, one constantly turns to the books and polemics written about it. And once read, critically interrogated, and understood, action will remain inevitable. Certainly, to restrict people from understanding how and why insurgency happens is most dubious, for if we cannot begin to understand, how can we begin to act — justly and rightfully? From this question, it seems that the government is also inevitably left to deal with the same end. If it could still be expected from the government, then they should have already done what is at once simply and complexly the most sensible act any genuine and humane democratic institution must do: that is, to fully respect its peoples to whom they must genuinely serve — not lord over.
Works Cited
Amnesty International. “Dangerous anti-terror law in the Philippines yet another setback for human rights.” Amnesty International, 3 July 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/philippines-dangerous-antiterror-law-yet-another-setback-for-human-rights/. Accessed 4 December 2021.
Amnesty International. Philippines: Ensure justice for ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings and other attacks against activists. 25 January 2023. Amnesty International, Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa35/6377/2023/en/.
Bolledo, Jairo. “After 8 months, CPP confirms death of party leaders, the Tiamzons.” Rappler, 20 April 2023, https://www.rappler.com/nation/communist-party-philippines-confirms-death-leaders-benito-wilma-tiamzon-april-2023/.
Boragay, Gia. “Book purging: A tactic straight from a tyrant’s playbook.” AlterMidya, 11 November 2021, https://www.altermidya.net/book-purging-a-tactic-straight-from-a-tyrants-playbook/. Accessed 11 January 2022.
Britannica, and The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “academic freedom.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 13 April 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom. Accessed 4 December 2021.
de Vera, Sherwin. “CHED-Cordillera asks schools to rid libraries of ‘subversive’ materials.” Rappler, 25 October 2021, https://www.rappler.com/nation/commission-higher-education-cordillera-asks-schools-remove-subversive-materials-from-libraries/. Accessed 4 December 2021.
Diño, Niña. “Dwindling numbers: Lumad schools continue to suffer closures, attacks during pandemic.” Rappler, 18 September 2020, https://www.rappler.com/moveph/lumad-schools-continue-to-suffer-closures-attacks-coronavirus-pandemic/. Accessed 4 December 2021.
Indigenous Peoples Rights International. “PHILIPPINES | 9 Indigenous Tumandok killed, 17 others arrested in police ops in Panay.” Indigenous Peoples Rights International, 8 January 2021, https://www.iprights.org/news-and-events/news-and-features/philippines-9-indigenous-tumandok-killed-17-others-arrested-in-police-ops-in-panay. Accessed 4 December 2021.
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Subingsubing, Krixia, and Villamor Visaya. “Books, papers on gov’t-NDFP talks purged from library of Kalinga State University.” Inquirer.net, 15 September 2021, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1487962/books-documents-on-govt-ndfp-talks-purged-from-library#ixzz78ILEZLQP. Accessed 4 December 2021.
Torres, Sherrie Ann. “Mga senador gigil na sa walang habas na red-tagging ng NTF-ELCAC.” ABS-CBN News, 22 April 2021, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/04/22/21/senador-gigil-red-tagging-ntf-elcac. Accessed 4 December 2021.
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UP Media and Public Relations Office. “Statement on the Regional Memo on the Removal of “Subversive” Books from Libraries in the CAR.” University of the Philippines, 6 November 2021, https://up.edu.ph/statement-on-the-regional-memo-on-the-removal-of-subversive-books-from-libraries-in-the-car/. Accessed 4 December 2021.
Visaya, Villamor. “Another university removes NDFP books from library.” Inquirer.net, 23 September 2021, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1491609/another-university-removes-ndfp-books-from-library. Accessed 4 December 2021.
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Jecko Sanjorjo, 22, is a senior BA Communication Arts student at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He is interested in criticism, cultural memory, and creative writing.
