Opinion piece by Marit Stinus-Cabugon in the Manila Times (Jun 17, 2019): On Lisandro Claudio and red-tagging
LISANDRO “Leloy” Claudio is an associate professor in the history and literature departments of De La Salle University, Manila, a contributor and commentator of Rappler, and recipient of the George McT. Kahin Book Prize 2019 for his book Liberalism and the Postcolony: Thinking the State in the 20th-Century Philippines. The Kahin Book Prize is given by the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) which, in its own words, is “a scholarly, non-political, non-profit professional association open to all persons interested in Asia and the study of Asia. With approximately 7,000 members worldwide… the AAS is the largest organization of its kind.”
Claudio was recently shortlisted for a position at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of California Berkeley. While the university’s search committee is evaluating the shortlisted aspirants, 466 individuals signed a petition opposing Claudio’s appointment. Walden Bello, Patricio Abinales, and my Manila Times colleague Antonio Contreras, among others, have commented on the controversy.
The petition, titled “Filipino communities raise concern about candidate for a Southeast Asian studies job at Berkeley,” accuses Claudio of “naming or outing individuals, including students at his previous campus Ateneo de Manila University, on the basis of their leftwing perspectives or affiliations in a political climate in the Philippines that makes such conduct highly dangerous for those singled out in this way.” Claudio, petitioners claim, is “one of the astonishingly reckless voices in the academe who unambiguously [red-]tags organizations, leaders, students, and ordinary activists despite the peril of such [red-]tagging.”
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The ‘crime’ of Claudio, however, is not the ‘naming’ or ‘outing’ of individuals—he neither named nor outed anyone—but having pointed out the obvious unambiguously: the affiliation of Kabataan party list and associates with the Communist Party of the Philippines.
In connection with the organization of a Kabataan party-list Katipunan chapter in February 2017, Claudio explained to The Guidon (the student publication of Ateneo de Manila) that democracy won’t prosper if we speak in euphemisms (www.theguidon.com, May 6, 2017). In other words, Kabataan, when recruiting members among the students, should disclose its affiliation with the CPP. Claudio told the student publication that “protecting his students is his primary concern” and added that some students “have died as a result of being sent to [NPA areas] after being recruited by aboveground organizations.”
A member of Kabataan party-list Katipunan in the same article confirmed that the party is a part of the so-called national democratic mass organizations, or NDMOs. While this doesn’t “automatically translate to being part of the NPA”, “NDMOs recognize armed struggle,” said Diana Breboneria, a founding member of Kabataan Katipunan chapter and “de facto education and research committee head” of the university.
I was reminded of friends of mine—political science students of the University of the Philippines Cebu campus—who in 2004 were forced to take their practicum with what Breboneria calls national democratic mass organizations. Forced because their professor, herself a member of an NDMO, told them that they had to choose among NGOs accredited by the university. All these NGOs turned out to be NDMOs. But worse, UP Cebu actually did not require host organizations or establishments to be accredited. There was in fact no accreditation system at all. Because this happened in an election year, some of the students found themselves in the campaign sorties of Gabriela and Anakpawis. Others ended up literally running away because they were made to meet with suspected NPA rebels in a remote place in Cebu’s hinterlands.
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The point of professor Claudio is that students, as well as the general public, should be told the truth and not be deliberately deceived. National democratic mass organizations are not merely leftwing, militant or ‘progressive.’ They are part of the National Democratic Front of the Communist Party of the Philippines. They serve the CPP and its purpose. Few members of NDMOs are actually members of the CPP, but they serve the CPP’s agenda as that is the very reason for the NDMOs’ existence. They support the armed struggle, not necessarily by joining the NPA but by making it difficult for the government to defeat it. The National Democratic Front is the shield where the New People’s Army is the sword in the CPP’s quest to overthrow the government and seize political power.
Claudio’s “red-tagging” is therefore merely calling a spade a spade. It does not by itself endanger members of national democratic mass organizations but is probably seen as a threat to the movement’s recruitment of new followers and expansion of solidarity networks in the US. NDMO chapters across the US mobilize moral and material support for what is in reality the CPP’s cause, such as raising funds for lumad schools in Mindanao suspected by the government of being centers for NPA recruitment. These national democratic mass organizations are the “Filipino communities” behind the petition.
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