By: Emme Rose Santiagudo
A line from the annual cheering competition among academic organizations in the University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) in the town of Miag-ao, Iloilo made rounds on social media after students became the subject of online harassments from supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte.
The line, “Let’s kill this president, charot!” was part of the almost 18-minute cheering performance of Skimmers, an academic organization in UPV composed of students taking up Communication and Media Studies and Literature in the annual cheering competition on Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at the UPV grandstand in Miag-ao, Iloilo.
However, the cheering line angered the supporters of the President who claimed that the students committed sedition and launched modes of online attacks against the students.
In a joint statement issued by the UPV– University Student Council, Local College Councils and various student organizations in UP Visayas, they said that “the line’s satirical nature did not sit well with Duterte supporters as they took their threats and harassment to Facebook and launched different attacks against Skimmers and its cheerers”.
“These threats are made more pressing and credible as the pages and groups supporting Duterte publicized some personal information of the Skimmers Governor and Skimmers adviser, making them a target,” the statement said.
The president’s staunch supporter, Mocha Uson, deputy executive director of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration also shared portions of the video in her Mocha Uson Blog in Facebook with a caption, “Let’s kill the President daw? Yan na ba talaga ang tinuturo nila sa University of the Philippines ngayon?”
“The post in question has over 321,000 views and 2,000 shares at the time of writing, which has inspired Duterte supporters to send video threats to several Skimmers cheerers, posting their photos without consent (which is a clear violation of the Data Privacy Act), and redtagging the University along with its University Student Council,” the statement furthered.
The online attacks on has forced some of the cheerers, their governor and even their adviser to temporarily deactivate some of their social media accounts.
The student council alongside student organizations in UPV in their statement, strongly condemned the “the blatant acts of doxxing and harassment targeting members of the Skimmers academic organization, particularly its governor and its adviser”.
“With the increased instances of redtagging by this oppressive state whenever the University raises awareness and action on societal issues, we will not and will never tolerate any kind of harassment or unjust behavior towards our constituents, whether we are facing a single troll or the whole Duterte administration. We won’t let this go unanswered,” they stressed.
Despite the backlash, Skimmers and UPV also gained support from social media users who praised the students for their “woke” cheering performance.
Over the weekend, the #HandsOffSkimmers trended on Twitter while the cheering performance of Skimmers posted in YouTube garnered 109,000 views and 9,200 likes as of this writing.
Meanwhile, BagongAlyansangMakabayan-Panay (Bayan Panay) also expressed their support to the UPV community and reiterated that the academic institution only exercised their rights on the freedom of speech.
“These attacks against the students and the academe are in consonance with Duterte’s policies to silence its critics through threats and harassments. These paid trolls cannot even distinguish satirical or sarcastic cheers from truthful orders of Duterte that already killed thousands of innocent civilians,” they said in their statement.
The cheering performance of Skimmers which also highlighted several political and social issues such as West Philippine Sea, Rice Tarrification Law, the controversial memorandum of Commission on Higher Education removing Filipino, Panitikan, and the Philippine Constitution as core subjects in college; and the proposed mandatory Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) of the government among others through cheers and yells made them the champion of the cheering competition.
Ten other academic organizations from UPV participated in the annual cheering competition.
Yearly, the competition allows students to tackle and voice out their opinions on issues in the academe, local community and other national and societal concerns through a 15 to 20-minute cheering performance based on their chosen theme.
