Duterte government officials under the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) this month confiscated “subversive textbooks and reading materials” from libraries of three state universities. The books are being replaced by materials provided by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

On 1 September, elements of the AFP and Philippine National Police ‘inspected’ the library of the Kalinga State University in northern Luzon and confiscated publications of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines from the shelves. The following day, University officials said they pulled out all the NDFP-donated books from their library.

On 23 September, Ricmar Aquino, President of the Isabela State University, ordered the main campus and 10 other campuses of the University to pull out of their libraries all books of the NDFP and of Prof. Jose Maria Sison, “in order to protect the youth and students from insurgent ideology.”

On 25 September, a third university, Aklan State University in the Visayas, followed suit. The books removed from the three universities’ libraries were “turned over” to the AFP and the PNP. Among those confiscated were materials about the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the NDFP. Justifying the censorship, government prosecutor Flosemer Chris Gonzales of Aklan said the books are “are not mentally healthy for students… Academic freedom is always subject to control and supervision by the state.”

Human rights alliance Karapatan protested the acts of the universities calling it a “dangerous precedent” and said the banning of the books restricts free speech, academic freedom and information on the peace negotiations and the armed conflict.

The Communist Party of the Philippines on 26 September denounced the AFP and PNP for “pressuring and compelling school officials to remove and ban from their libraries books and other literature authored or published by the NDFP and Prof. Jose Ma. Sison.”

It said, “We are certain that the banning of books from public school libraries will not stop students and teachers from studying what the CPP, the NDFP and the NPA really stand for… These censorship schemes will not prevent more and more people, including the intellectuals, to join the revolutionary cause that represents the broad democratic ideals of the oppressed and exploited masses.”

Meanwhile, the University of the Philippines in Visayas announced that they will not remove reading materials and books considered as ‘subversive’ by the NTF-ELCAC. University Chancellor Clement Camposano said, “Not a single Marxist book, or any similar or so-called subversive material, will be removed from UPV's library collection.  We might even add more”.

He added that a university is a “free marketplace of ideas. Our business is to train and sharpen the minds of our students by challenging and exposing them to the widest latitude of ideas to produce intellectuals and reformers”.