NUJP: Hands off our campus colleagues

THE National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemns the harassment and surveillance against our colleagues in the campus press by the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

According to our long-time affiliate, the College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), police and military agents have visited Ateneo de Naga University (ADNU) and Baao Community College (BCC) in Camarines Sur earlier this month to warn school officials against allowing their campus publications and journalists from joining the CEGP and attending its activities. Police personnel visited ADNU’s The Pillar and BCC’s The Nexus to interrogate student journalists about recent CEGP-Bicol activities, the list of attendees to the Guild’s Luzon-wide student press convention and the whereabouts of its Vice President for Luzon Jan Joseph Goingo. CEGP Bicol chairperson Jhoan Villanueva was also notified by the BCC student affairs director that the Philippine Army’s 9th Infantry Division and the PNP in Bicol have shown them a memorandum on the conduct of an “investigation” on student publications in Bicol. Both schools refused to give copies of the memorandum to the CEGP but Callueng said that ADNU has tightened its security procedures because of the surveillance.

The CEGP is a legitimate media organization that has a long history of upholding press freedom and the people’s right to know. It serves as the wellspring of the Philippine mass media. We call on the PNP, the AFP and the Duterte government to stop its surveillance and harassments of student journalists. We also urge the Ateneo de Naga and Baao Community College to be transparent and share the contents of the memorandum left by the police with the staff of The Pillars and The Nexus. #