UPDATE: As pointed out by a commenter below, the attached scans are not for the 1982 Soto-Enrile Accord between the League of Filipino Students (LFS) and the Department of National Defense (DND), but of the 1989 Abueva-Ramos Accord.
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The demonstration by some persons in front of the gate of the University of the Philippines Cebu Campus yesterday, June 5, 2020, which resulted into the arrest of eight persons (one of them just a bystander) brought to the consciousness of netizens the document known as the UP-DND 1989 Accord, which some refers to as the Soto-Enrile Accord. This document requires that the commander of a unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine Constabulary – Integrated National Police (PC-INP, now the Philippine National Police or PNP), or Citizens’ Armed Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU) intending to conduct any military or police operation within any U.P. campus should give prior notification to the U.P. President, or the Chancellor of a constituent university, or the Dean of a regional unit or the respective officers-in-charge in the event of their absence.
The dispersal of a demonstration is clearly a police operation.
The same document also prohibits members of the AFP, PNP, or CAFGU from entering U.P. campuses except in cases of hot pursuit and similar occasions of emergency, or when so requested by U.P. officials. Hot pursuit is clearly to be understood as having the same meaning as hot pursuit in our Rules of Court.
The rule is absolute non-interference with peaceful protests. The document transfers the responsibility over the protest to the concerned U.P. officials – they shall have responsibility to maintain peace and order.
Copies of the five pages of the Accord is hereto attached.
