STUDENT ACTIVISTS from various universities have staged a protest against the Marcos administration’s call to revive the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), saying it would only force the youth to be on the frontline of the rising maritime dispute between the Philippines and China.
Student Christian Movement of the Philippines (SCMP) chairperson Kej Andres called for a peaceful resolution of the longstanding West Philippine Sea dispute, saying enforcing a military presence within a school setting would threaten students’ safety.
“There are many ways to serve the country and there are diplomatic means to settle the West Philippine Sea issue. The youth must not be sacrificial lambs to a war that we do not want,” Andres said in a statement issued last Monday, Nov. 4.
Andres claimed that the mandatory ROTC bill would only curtail what he called the “worsening” state of academic freedom. He cited Thomasian cadet Mark Welson Chua, whose death has been linked to his exposè of the corruption in the University’s military training program.
“We also expect that mandatory ROTC will worsen the state of campus and press freedom within schools. An established military presence will subject students and their supposed academic freedoms into surveillance, especially that the youth have been subject to red-tagging by military elements,” Andres said.
“May we remind the senators that the reason why this is optional at the moment is because of the death of UST cadet Mark Welson Chua in 2001,” he added.
Chua was a UST Mechanical Engineering sophomore who exposed the supposed bribery and extortion in the University’s ROTC program. Chua’s decomposing body was found along Pasig River on March 18, 2001, two months after the alleged irregularities were revealed.
His death prompted the Arroyo administration to abolish the mandatory ROTC the following year and implement the National Service Training Program (NSTP) Act of 2001, which made the military training optional.
“We do not want another Mark Welson Chua,” several student activists chanted during the rally in front of UST.
READ: Youth partylist reminds Marcos admin of Chua case amid fresh push to revive mandatory ROTC
In October, Sen. Francis Tolentino said the bill has the support of the Marcos administration and has become a “top priority” of lawmakers.
Anakbayan member Dex Frogoso said student activists would encourage young Filipinos to join a movement against the bill, noting that plenary debates on the measure are set to resume this month.
“[R]esistance is really needed. We will carry out these actions and we will not stop until the mandatory ROTC is scrapped… The voices of students, we can see in our history that they are powerful,” he added.
Students from various institutions, including UST, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, Technological University of the Philippines and Polytechnic University of the Philippines joined the protest, which lasted for almost two hours. F — Rovy Jilyn Fraginal
