AFP asks for UP’s trust, proceeds to red-tag their alumni

Curb your morality

It was barely a week ago when the Department of National Defense (DND) terminated its 30-year-old accord with the University of the Philippines (UP), citing its desire to better protect UP students from alleged communist recruiters within the university.

In a letter explaining the decision, DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana hopes that the youth could see the Armed Forcers (AFP) and the police as ‘protectors worthy of trust, not fear‘. And if that was already a near-impossible ask as we predicted, the recent move by the AFP ain’t doing much to dispute that fact.

The AFP has recently apologized for falsely red-tagging 8 UP alumni in a since-deleted post on social media. The military initially released a list of names consisting of students from the univ who have allegedly either died or were captured as members of the New People’s Army.

The post went viral after several figures, some of whom are lawyers, teachers, and journalists, stepped forward to say that a) they are still alive and b) the claim is fake news.

Former UP students tagged by AFP as killed/captured members of NPA face an online forum to deny involvement with the rebel group and prove that they are still free and alive. pic.twitter.com/8Cg6rBXcTH | via @michael_delizo

— ABS-CBN News (@ABSCBNNews) January 23, 2021

It’s a scary thing to be falsely tagged as part of a terrorist group, let alone to have your name published and vulnerable to pvblic crucifixion on social media. The AFP’s response is basically ‘Oops, our bad, we’ll look into it‘, but some of the alumni are reportedly considering filing libel charges against the AFP.

We’ve asked this every time this kind of issue pops up: If we can’t trust our military or our police, who supposedly have millions of intel funds at their disposal, who are expected to be well-trained and disciplined enough to be our peacemakers, then who can we turn to?

Is it still a surprise then that fear and paranoia ensue whenever the AFP makes a move with ‘noble intentions’? In a society that tends to tag people as guilty until proven innocent, we’d argue that constantly being on edge is a justifiable response.

The post <b> AFP asks for UP’s trust, proceeds to red-tag their alumni </b> appeared first on WE THE PVBLIC.

Source: we the pvblic