In the Philippines, ‘Diliman Commune’ a renewed symbol of resistance 50 years on

In 1971, a sprawling university campus north of Manila became the site of a student-led uprising as public anger over surging oil prices reached its peak.

On February 1, the students and some teaching staff came out in sympathy with striking transport workers, boycotting classes and barricading themselves inside the University of the Philippines’ (UP) Diliman campus for eight days against soldiers firing tear gas and a professor who shot and killed a student.

Five decades on, the UP’s reputation as a bastion of student activism has gained renewed significance, amid a crackdown by President Rodrigo Duterte’s government on universities it believes are a breeding ground for communists and “state enemies”.

The UP has come in for particular criticism, with authorities last month nullifying a 32-year-old accord between it and the country’s Department of National Defence that had limited the military activities that could be carried out on any of its 21 campuses nationwide. Defence chief Delfin Lorenzana called the agreement “obsolete” and said it allowed members of the New People’s Army – the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines which has been fighting Asia’s longest-running insurgency against the government in Manila for more than five decades – to recruit UP students to their cause.

Victoria Bataclan, 70, remembers the events of February 1971 well. The retired diplomat said she came perilously close to losing her life during the siege.

A political-science student at the time, she was trying to escape her dormitory as officers from the Philippine Constabulary – a branch of the armed forces that dealt with insurgencies – stormed the building on February 2.