BREAK CHAINS

Break Chains

The discreet pursuit for justice amidst the celebration of UP Cebu Intramural 2011 is the irony the students from the University of the Philippines Cebu College had to take after three UPians together with 36 farmers, were arrested in the dispersal of a human barricade in Aloguinsan. 

Some people blame the aggressive student activism. They say UP students have gone beyond what they are capacitated to do and the arrest is just a reminder that they should abate rallies and just stay inside the campus. But the claim is unfair.

Although rallying has become the “mark” of UP students as many would say, what the students did in Aloguinsan was not an abuse of their right to assembly nor was it neither inappropriate nor unethical. It was learning through the hard way, learning through reality.

To point, Melanie Montano, Remy Manzon and Januelle Rontos were only there for Basic Masses Integration (BMI), a program which aims students discover and experience firsthand plight of the masses. They were there to know what is really happening outside the school campus—to be aware, and not to cause trouble nor obstruct justice, as the police would claim. And not many of the students of today would dare do it.

The students were not to be blamed. They went there voluntarily because they believe that learning should not end with theories. Books could not offer that kind of knowledge. Only then does learning become complete and authentic when it is applied. And by struggling with the farmers, these students surely had a cup-full of gen.

Charged with resistance to arrest and direct assault to person in authority, Montano, Manzon and Rontos served 3 nights and four days in jail—enough to make a statement on how diseased the law of the state has become and how poor the agrarian sector of the country is.

And as these students attended the Intramurals after they were freed from the hands of the authorities, they know for a fact that the experience was a mirror to show how authorities use power to break voices.

They were arrested not because they had the kind of tone that insulted the authority. They were seized because of the fact that they actually had voice and with that, they know that the battle for justice had just started.