The security sector will be conducting indoctrination sorties inside college and university campuses to discuss the plans and programs of the government to counter the alleged brainwashing of left-leaning students, the Interior department said Monday.
In a television interview, Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing said students had always been exposed to the one-sided point of view of left-leaning organizations.
He said the security sector must be given the chance to talk to the students to provide them with a broader spectrum of the political realities.
“Ang maganda dito bigyan natin ng pagkakataon ang ating mga kabataan na makita ang kabilang kwento,” Densing said.
“Dalawang kuwento po ‘yan: kaliwa at kanan, at saka meron pang-gitna. Bigyan po natin ng pagkakataon ang kabataan na makita ‘yung buong spectrum.”
Reports said left-leaning organization targeting students in their recruitment activities depict the bad side of the government, a form of brainwashing, to convince them to join the underground movement.
Initially, students are tapped to distribute anti-government leaflets in several places within and outside the schools as an initiation.
Densing says leftist personalities normally conduct initial surveys inside campuses and, once students are persuaded, they take them out of the campus for to continue the indoctrination.
Densing claims that 500 to 1,000 students are being recruited by leftist elements annually.
“Nangyayari ho ‘yan. Pagkatapos nilang mamundok kalahati o siguro a substantial number of them naiiwan sa bundok. ‘Yung iba naman bumabalik sa lipunan bilang kasapi ng mga leftist organizations,” he said.
Densing says dozens of college students recruited by the left and employed as warriors have been killed in encounters with the military.
Former Philippine National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa says security forces should be allowed to “indoctrinate” students in order to compete with the alleged brainwashing activities of left-leaning organizations.
Dela Rosa, now a senator, made the suggestion following a Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs’ inquiry on the disappearance of students after they joined left-leaning groups.
Dela Rosa claimed that 513 minors allegedly recruited by these left-leaning groups had been “neutralized” in the past 20 years.