The biggest book industry alliance in the Philippines recently joined the many human rights defenders, academe, youth and activist organizations expressing outrage over the purging of ‘subversive’ materials from state university libraries by security forces of the Rodrigo Duterte regime.
The Book Development Association of the Philippines on 6 November said, “The removal of books with sensitive or challenging content is a violation of freedom in publishing and freedom of thought, and impedes critical thinking and empathy.” It stressed, “We need to remember that the goal of subversive literature is to encourage people to think for themselves, while having access to different perspectives and possible ideals.”
The BDAP is composed of 92 of the country’s most prominent publishers, including Adarna House, Anvil Publishing, National Bookstore, Ateneo de Manila University Press and the University of the Philippines Press.
The Duterte government’s book purging campaign followed a series of directives from the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), Armed Forces of the Philippines and Commision on Higher Education. The ‘offending’ literature included those on the GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations, the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, as well as essays by NDFP Chief Political Consultant Prof. Jose Ma. Sison.
Earlier, University of the Philippines officials, the UP Diliman University Council, University of the Visayas, Citizens’ Alliance for Just Peace, the Union of Agricultural Workers and Taripnong-Cagayan Valley have all denounced the ban as a violation of academic freedom.
In a separate statement, the Communist Party of the Philippines called the book purging as “barefaced acts of censorship and suppression.” The CPP said, “The military and police are brazenly stepping beyond their territory and trampling on the freedom of thought and freedom of expression. They make the stupid and condescending claim of ‘protecting the youth’ as if students and their teachers have no critical faculties of thinking.”
It added, “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.”
On 1 November, the Academics Unite for Democracy and Human Rights launched a website called “Aswang sa Aklatan” https://handsoffourlibraries.crd.co, a platform to oppose the book purging and an online archive of the endangered literature. The collective’s website stated, “Academic freedom is a useless concept if people do not have access to educational materials . . . although this problem needs structural solutions, uploading free-to-download materials constitutes an initial step toward democratizing access to information.”