Palace on UAAP ‘Black Sunday’ game: Feel free to voice concern

MANILA, Philippines – Members of the Ateneo and La Salle communities are free to air their concerns on extrajudicial killings and the proposed heroes’ burial for the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos – so long as they do so in a “peaceful and legal” way.

This was Malacañang’s response to the call issued by the two universities, asking their members to wear black during the upcoming UAAP game on Sunday, October 2, between the Blue Eagles and the Green Archers.

The two universities said the move aimed to express their protest against the growing number of extrajudicial killings under the government’s bloody war against drugs.

“We live in a democracy where everyone is entitled to give an opinion, air his grievance, or voice his solidarity or disagreement with the government as long as the means used is peaceful, legal, and constitutional. As we learned in our class, ‘I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it,'” Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement on Saturday, October 1.

Andanar also encouraged the communities of the two schools to “step up and bring the blessings of their quality education by helping the government transform the many communities of the poor in our society.”

“The menace of illegal drugs has also swept away human rights and human lives which are some values we are taught in school,” he added.

On July 22, De La Salle Philippines president Brother Jose Mari Jimenez said in a pastoral statement that he was “deepley disturbed” by the spate of killings under the Duterte administration. That same month, Ateneo de Manila University president Father Jose Ramon Villarin condemned the killings.

The rising number of killings, now at around 3,500, linked to the war on drugs have also drawn the attention of the United Nations, the European Parliament, the United States, and human rights groups. – Rappler.com