Exposing youth to more harassment

Letters . 

HOUSE Bill 8961 mandates, passed on second reading, mandates the institutionalization, development, training, organization and administration of basic Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in Grades 11 and 12 in public and private educational institutions.

The institutionalization of the mandatory ROTC for senior high will only expose the youth to more harassment in their schools. The Duterte administration should be reminded of why mandatory ROTC was removed in college in the first place. There was a great number of students, teachers, parents and other concerned citizens who joined a series of massive protest actions against the murder of University of Santo Tomas student.

There have been numerous reports of hazing within the ROTC. Time and again, the military and police institutions have shown the culture of violence that pervades among their ranks. The recent hazing and harassment cases in the PNPA and in the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, the cases of sexual harassment of women and LGBT Cadets in the ROTC program are proof of the toxic macho and sexist culture that are deeply embedded in these institutions.

The Duterte administration’s tyrannical rule has been targeting schools, their students and teachers with the red-tagging of universities, continuing profiling of teachers and now the institutionalization of the mandatory ROTC. Institutionalizing the mandatory ROTC in senior high schools will be another tool of the Duterte administration to repress students rights, open the gates for the militarization of schools and more aggressive attacks against critics of the regime among the youth. Institutionalizing mandatory ROTC will never instill patriotism among the youth.

We reiterate our call to abolish ROTC. In these times where no less than the president espouses and practices misogyny and fascism, it is dangerous for the Filipino youth to be exposed to such a program. We call on the Filipino youth to help us amplify our voice in our fight against state violence and hold accountable Duterte’s macho-fascist regime. –Antonio Tinio and France Castro, party-list group representatives

Swamped Site

ON Friday, Feb. 8, 2019, the website of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines became briefly unavailable twice after being subjected to a distributed denial of service attack.

According to our digital security partners, the two attacks happened at around 6 am and 6 pm, with attackers sending up to 426 gigabytes of traffic to our website, almost 10 times the 50 gb/s that brought down alternative news site Bulatlat.

Most of the IP addresses came from India, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Fortunately, we quickly countered the attacks and the site has been back up since 8:30 pm.

We believe the attack on the NUJP site is related to the ones launched against Bulatlat and alternative news sites Kodao Productions and AlterMidya, all of which host NUJP chapters. – National Union of Journalists of the Philippines