Before noon, there were already calls for a bonfire in University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. This time, though, it was a call for an indignation gathering in Sunken Garden in the Diliman campus in the evening of the day that authorities arrested fugitive general Jovito Palparan Jr. in Sta. Mesa, Manila.

It was a few days removed from the first bonfire event in Sunken Garden–to celebrate the school’s first basketball win in a popular collegiate tournament. This time, however, the UP Diliman administration did not give permission to the activists’ call for a gathering, saying that the event would be a “partisan one”. The teachers’ group, Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (Contend) in UP asserted that even the chancellor’s refusal to allow such gathering would be a partisan decision–and continued on with the event.

Palparan had been in hiding for almost three years; he was wanted for the enforced disappearances of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno. Both students were allegedly abducted by Palparan’s men in Hagonoy, Bulacan in June 26, 2006 while volunteering for a peasant organization. Even before the abduction, however, Palparan was already notorious as a brutal army commander in provinces where he was assigned, but especially in Southern Tagalog, Eastern Visayas, Ilocos Region, Mindanao and Central Luzon.