AGHAM – Advocates of Science and Technology for the People calls out the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) after Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. confirmed the agency’s membership in the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). NTF-ELCAC is infamous for its role as one of the most rabid enforcers of state fascism in the country.
It is deeply ironic that the chief science agency is working in collaboration with NTF-ELCAC, one of the most unscientific entities in the country, notorious for its role in red-tagging, illegal arrests, and killings of activists, human rights advocates, and state critics. Time and again, the task force has proven its absolutist stand against progressive groups and individuals, often ignoring evidence proving the innocence and advocacies of its victims.
The DOST’s focus should be on advancing science and technology for the benefit of the people, not on aiding groups that fuel repression and violence. The DOST must reevaluate its involvement with NTF-ELCAC especially since, as Solidum admitted, the science agency’s tasks are “not clear.” As the people continue to suffer from typhoon after typhoon, rainstorm after rainstorm, and crisis after crisis, the administration has more urgent obligations, including providing scientifically supported solutions and measures such as flood control and management, nature conservation, and effective disaster preparedness and recovery for communities.
With the task force’s bloodied hands, it is clear that community empowerment is not among the purposes of NTF-ELCAC. The DOST’s participation in the task force would only mean advancements in science and technology for a more dangerous surveillance system, deadlier weaponry, further destruction of communities and the environment, and the rationalization of killing people’s scientists by tagging them as “terrorists.”
We have seen this traitorous use of science and technology as tools to threaten human rights. There are many examples of this, both in the present and historically, such as the threat of surveillance through SIM registration [1], the use of advanced military equipment to bomb rural communities [2], the use of artificial intelligence to aid Israel’s genocide in Palestine [3], and the deployment of bioweapons in Vietnam.
As scientists for the people, we firmly believe that science and technology should be used for the betterment of society, not to aid in the oppression of our own people. Science and technology should never be weaponized to advance anti-people agendas like those of the NTF-ELCAC, which has no place in a just society. Its existence threatens human rights and undermines the true role of science and technology in improving people’s lives. We, therefore, call for the abolishment of NTF-ELCAC and the immediate withdrawal of vital state agencies such as the DOST from the anti-people task force.#
Notes:
[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/C1EHCbov8ZM/
[3] https://agham.org/statement/nationalist-filipino-scientists-stand-in-solidarity-with-palestine/
0 Comments