THE COLLEGE Editors Guild of the Philippines renewed its call to defend campus publications from “repression and harassment.”

The group cited instances of “repressions” such as the incident involving Joshua Molo, former editor of the University of the East’s Dawn who was forced to apologize for criticizing the government’s handling of the pandemic, the red-tagging of editors and writers of the University of the Philippines’ Solidaridad; police surveillance and intimidation of editors of the Holy Angel University’s The Angelite; and the suspension of the Twitter account of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines’ Alyansa ng Kabataang Mamahayag.

“CEGP emphasizes the violations that were recorded, including cutting off funds, censorship, non-mandatory collection of publication funds, and harassment are part of the regime’s t fascist script,” the guild said in a statement.

“Encroachments on the campus press like the ones mentioned are still allowed to exist today. Some publications have to resort to online publishing instead of physical prints, as should be entailed by the law, because of censorship and fund-cutting issues,” it added.

The group said that school administrations “dislike points in editorial issues that reflect the views of both the board and students.”

It lamented that the Campus Journalism Act of 1991 does not provide full protection to student journalists because it allows exceptions such as the “material disruption of classwork or involving substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.”

“Such exceptions may be used by school administrations to state that a certain article is an infringement of their rights or that it involves substantial disorder even if it only speaks for the interest of the students,” the group said.

“Myriad attacks on the press have surfaced — now, they are endangering the freedom of the press even at the campus level. On this level of suppression and inutile Covid19 response, we need to collectively fight these attacks inflicted by the murderous regime,” CEGP said.