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Solidarity message to the Lumad of Mindanao – ICHRP Rome

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Solidarity message to the Lumad of Mindanao – ICHRP Rome

In behalf of our organizations UMANGAT-MIGRANTE and ICHRP-Rome, Italy and other fellow overseas Filipino Workers in Italy, we express our full support to the ongoing struggles of the Lumad  against the closures of their schools, militarization of their villages and the unabaited Human Rights violations and Extrajudicial killings being perpetrated by the AFP-run paramilitary groups.

From October 2014 to June this year, already 23 indigenous leaders have been killed in Northern Mindanao Region – 20 of them from the province of Bukidnon alone and the three from the neighboring Misamis Oriental. That is almost three lives mercilessly put out every month. And also aince May 2015, there have been more than 4,000 internally displaced people who have fled to the urban areas.  From Agusan, Sarangani, Davao Del Norte, Bukidnon, and Surigao del Sur, the Lumad have been forcibly displaced.  Taking shelter in public plazas or finding safety in Church sanctuaries, Lumad families suffer all the hardships of internally displaced persons.

These human rights violations against our indigenous people, particularly the Lumad has been historical, from the very beginning of the colonial history of Mindanao until the present day, the Lumad of Mindanao have been taken advantage of, their lands have been grabbed, and their labor has been exploited; more so, when the Lumad have resisted invaders or defended their lands and life, they have been driven out, economically marginalized, and even massacred.

As far as we know, the Lumad communities who are being subjected to violence are only resisting the entry and operations of foreign mining, logging and agro-corporations because these corporations are displacing them from their ancestral lands which are the source of their livelihood and where their ancestors are buried.  They consider these lands as sacred because they are the source of life and the burial grounds of their people.  Taking these lands away from them is practically killing them as a people.

We recall the killing of Fr. Fausto Tentorio, PIME in Arakan on October 25, 2011, He  did not only serve and deepen the spiritual lives of the people but lived with them in the real sense of the word. He did not only preach about justice and God’s love for the poor in a vacuum. Fr. Fausto journeyed with the poor and marginalized peasants and lumads in their daily struggle for a better life and future for their children. He supported and joined the peasants and indigenous people’s struggle for land and right to self-determination, against exploitation and oppression, against militarization and human rights violations. Fr. Fausto was a staunch defender of the peasants’ and lumad’s rights and welfare.

The murder of Fr. Fausto deserves strong condemnation and indignation. It speaks so much about the Aquino administration; about his sugar-coated national security plan, Oplan Bayanihan. The strong and visible presence of the 57th Infantry Battalion in Arakan was not able to prevent the threat on Fr. Fausto’s life and security. It has unmasked the hypocrisy of the Aquino soldiers’ claim as human rights defenders. Fr. Fausto’s assassin killed him in broad daylight in his parish grounds without fear.

The Filipino migrant workers in Rome are dismayed of the failure of government to protect them from these rabid paramilitary groups. Why is this so? The people have become the enemy of the state. The state forces turned into investment defense forces. Working under the framework of the Internal Peace and Security Plan—or more popularly called ‘Oplan Bayanihan’, they try to dupe the public by reasoning that the people they have harassed, arbitrarily arrested and slapped with trumped-up charges, or even killed, are supporters of the New People’s Army (NPA). However, how can they justify their presence in areas where there are no NPAs? Clearly, militarization and paramilitarism are designed to protect investments such as corporate plantations and large mining.

There were also reports of soldiers bribing paramilitary men and even Lumad leaders to destroy IP schools, especially in Talaingod  with the continuous threat by soldiers of the Philippine Army’s 68th Infantry Battalion and the paramilitary group Alamara to the staff of Salugpungan Ta Tanu Igkanugon Community Learning Center (STTICLC) at sitio Tibukag in Talaingod, there is a bleak chance for the school to open. Soldiers’ orders: kill and burn.

The latest episode on these dark records on the Indigenous killings, once again, in Mindanao was the cold blooded murder  of a Lumad School Principal (Head Teacher) in Surigao only indicates that the end to this killings is still to be seen.

The brutal slaying of IP leaders and innocent civilians, the displacements of residents, children being rejected by proper school and continues military operation in Mindanao that aggravate more of these violence and more human rights violations should be denounced and STOPPED. We will continue to expose the brutality of the military and para-militaries against the Lumad and their children and we plan to further our campaigns even to the highest leader of the catholic church, to Pope Francis of the Vatican City to appeal to him and to encourage the wichole church in Philippines to take action and and be compassionate because the lumad are not just Filipinos but also children of God.

United with the Lumad we raise our voice in calling for the end of crimes against our Indigenous people the Lumad in particular.

Stop the closure of Lumad schools!
Stop Lumad killings!
Pull out military forces from Lumad communities!
Disband paramilitary forces!
Respect the indigenous peoples’ rights to education, livelihood and self-determination!
Justice for all victims of human rights violations!
Junk Oplan Bayanihan!

 

Escalating violence, mining encroachment spark protests in the Philippines

ICHRP Secretariat
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Escalating violence, mining encroachment spark protests in the Philippines

By Hilary Beaumont

https://news.vice.com/article/escalating-violence-and-mining-encroachment-spark-protests-in-the-philippines

Watch video here: http://en.daily.vice.com/videos/october-28-matty-moose-hunt-pk-subban-philippines-mining

Hundreds of sombre indigenous protesters marched through the dark streets of Manila Sunday nightafter travelling for days to the Philippine capital. They held banners and signs calling on the government to end the escalating violence and killings of Lumads in the mineral-rich southern Mindanao region.

The Lumads, an indigenous group with traditional land in the Mindanao, say the government is sanctioning military and paramilitary operations on their land in order to displace them and allow mining companies, including those with Canadian, Australian and British interests, to enter the region.

In recent months, increased violence and murders of Lumads in the Mindanao region has forced thousands to evacuate communities and schools. On Aug. 18, five Lumads were killed, allegedly by government soldiers, according to Human Rights Watch, and on Sept. 1, three leaders of a Lumad community were allegedly killed by a paramilitary group. Bishop Modesto Villasanta told Filipino newspaper Sun Star that soldiers stood by and did nothing as the paramilitary murdered them.

That’s why hundreds of Lumads led a caravan called a Manilakbayan from the Mindanao area to Manila, stopping to hold rallies along the way, to bring attention to the murders.

The government, meanwhile, has denied any responsibility. In early September, Philippine president Benigno Aquino said “there is no campaign to kill Lumad people. We are serving the people … Serving the people does not mean killing its citizens.”

350.org has accused mining companies including UK-based Philex, Swiss company Glencore, which has a Canadian mining arm, Japanese company Sumitomo, Australia’s Red 5 Limited, and Canadian-linked Toronto Ventures Incorporated (now known as TVI Resources Development) of “land grabs” in the Mindanao.

Speaking to VICE News at the Manila protest, Vennel Chenfoo, chair of the Panalipdan Youth Mindanao Organization, accused mining companies including SMI, Xtrata and TVI of contributing to conflict in the region.

“These mining companies are the ones which are funding the paramilitary groups that are attacking the communities, schools, and the leaders of the indigenous peoples that do not want the entry of these large scale mining,” Chenfoo said.

“So this Manilakbayan is also calling for an end of the entry of these large scale companies and especially these mining companies that are entering Mindanao.”

TVI Pacific is a Canadian mining company based in Calgary. A corporate presentation on the TVI Pacific website dated October of this year says the company, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, holds a 30.66 percent interest in TVI Resource Development (Philippines) Inc., “a private Philippine production and development company seeking to list on the Philippine Stock Exchange in 2015, [a] listing [that] is expected to enhance TVI’s investment and market value considerably.”

In the presentation, TVI Pacific calls itself the “successful operator of the Canatuan gold-silver/copper-zinc mine, the first foreign-invested mine to reach production after the passage of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.” Mining watchdog MiningWatch has accused the Canatuan mine of displacing the Indigenous Subanons in the region. However, TVI Pacific reportedly closed the mine in January 2014.

The company did not respond to request for comment. VICE News could not find any direct link between either TVI Pacific or TVIRD and the Lumad killings in the Philippines.

This week, the Canadian chapter of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines is sending a letter to the Philippine government with nearly 100 signatories, including Canadian unions, church leaders, environmental groups, and university professors.

The letter asks the government to pull paramilitary and military forces from the Lumad region, stop its counter insurgency programs, and resume peace talks with the insurgent groups.

“The killings and the military operations are reportedly conducted to move out the Lumads from the area where there are mining concessions,” said Bern Jagunos, the coordinator for the group’s Canada chapter. “The Lumad are resisting that because they have been moving forever, since the time of the Spaniards they have been moving forever. And they are up in the mountains, they have nowhere to move, that’s their land … and that’s the source of their livelihood, so they are resisting this.”

She said it’s very difficult to link Canadian companies to mining in the region because their subsidiaries are often registered under different names in the Philippines, “but certainly Canadian companies together with American, Australians, British companies are the major countries that have mining interests in the Philippines.”

She said it’s important for both the Philippine government and these countries to recognize the rights of the indigenous people to their traditional land.

“[The government should] respect the right of indigenous people including the Lumad in the Mindanao to determine their own path to development,” Jagunos said. “That means that if they see that mining or resource development in their own territory, in their ancestral land, is not good for their community, that their right to refuse such plans be respected.”

UP opens arms to Lumad struggle

ICHRP Secretariat
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The Manilakbayan 2015 from Mindanao arrives at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman to press against state terror attacks on Lumad schools, communities and people.  UP Chancellor Dr. Michael Tan and CONTEND Chair Prof. Gerry Lanuza receive the Lumads with open arms. Music provided by Kontemporaryong Gamelan Pilipino (Kontra-GaPi) led by Prof. Edru Abraham. The campaign #StopLumadKillings is supported by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP).

CHRP-UK Solidarity Statement with #StopLumadKillings

ICHRP Secretariat
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CHRP-UK Solidarity Statement with #StopLumadKillings

We, the UK-based Campaign on Human Rights in the Philippines send our greetings of solidarity to the Lumad people from the United Kingdom, as you suffer grave human rights abuses.

We express our concern at all of the recent violence, but especially the killing of Lumad leaders Dionel Campos and Juvello Sinzo and Lumad school executive Emerito Samarca.

We call on President Aquino to order the immediate withdrawal of military and paramilitary forces from indigenous people’s communities in Mindanao and the disbandment of paramilitary forces, which are under the command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and dismantle the counterinsurgency program, Oplan Bayanihan, which continues to victimize innocent and unarmed civilians.

We understand the oppression you, the Lumad, face, and the attempts to silence your protest, sometimes at the hands of companies that are based in, or financed by, countries like the United Kingdom. In this time of global economy where the international collaboration between those who wish to exploit indigenous lands, territories and resources for profit become ever closer, we who oppose them and work for justice will stand together.

We stand with you in your struggle to achieve full recognition and respect for your rights over your lands, territories and resources, as well as the right to live in peace in a self-determined fashion.

Yours in solidarity,

Members of the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines-United Kingdom

Peace For Life: On state terror attacks on Lumad schools, communities, people

ICHRP Secretariat
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Exactly a year ago, the People’s Forum on Peace for Life,  had gathered in Mindanao, in the city of Davao, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary as having been the most consistent, vocal, and principled global interfaith movement against Empire and all of the unjust systems of hierarchy and oppression that exist in a world wherein predatory corporate capitalism reigns supreme.  In affirmation of our solidarity with and support for the struggle for dignity, rights, and justice of the Moro people and Lumads in Mindanao,  whose 700-strong participants to its Manilakbayan 2015  are presently encamped at the University of the Philippines  to press for a stop to Lumad killings and the attacks on their schools, communities and peoples,  call on the Aquino government to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all the major human rights instruments that the Philippine government is a party and signatory to and to immediately allow the requests of the UN and other international monitors to investigate human rights abuses in the Philippines;

As people of faith and conscience, we reiterate the call of the local and international community to:

  1. Immediately pull-out the 36th Infantry Battalion in Lumad communities in Lianga, Surigao del Sur, and dismantle the paramilitary group Magahat/Bagani Forces.
  2. Immediately form an independent fact-finding and investigation team composed of representatives from human rights groups, the Church, local government, and the Commission on Human Rights to look into these incidents of human rights violations; and, to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators.
  3. Dismantle the counterinsurgency program, Oplan Bayanihan, which has been linked to extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, trumped up charges, tortures, massacres, and displacement of thousands of individuals.
  4. For the US government to stop military aid to the Philippine Armed Forces or conditions all aid that ensure war crimes are not perpetuated.
  5. Resume the formal peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in order to address the root causes of armed conflict in Mindanao and the rest of the country for a just and lasting peace.

Peace for Life strongly condemns  the killings, massive forced dislocations, harassment, threats, occupation and closing of schools in Lumad tribal communities in Mindanao over the past month at the hands of the Philippine Military and paramilitary forces under their control. We are deeply enraged by the atrocious killing of Dionel Campos, Bello Sinzo, and Emerito Samarca, Executive Director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV)—an indigenous school which just won the National Literacy Award in 2014 from the Department of Education. We are shocked  that Mr. Samarca was taken by force by paramilitary group Magahat, hogtied, and eventually murdered with an ear-to-ear slit on the throat and gunshot wounds in the chest in one of the school’s classrooms.  The gruesome crime,  according to report, took place inside the Alcadev compound in sitio Hanayan, Brgy. Diatagon, Liang-ga town in Surigao Del Sur on September 1, 2015.

Two days prior to this incident, the paramilitary group burned down the school cooperative and threatened to massacre the entire community if they did not leave. Over 3,000 individuals evacuated to nearby municipalities. These are only few examples of recent  atrocities  and violation of the rights and dignity occurring in Lumad communities during the past several months.

It will be recalled that from July 16-18, 2015, the PfL  served as a co-endorser  of the International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Crimes of the U.S.-Aquino Regime against the Filipino people, held in Washington D.C., in which the Aquino administration in cahoots with the Obama government were found  guilty of gross human rights atrocities in the form of violations of economic and social rights, political and civil rights, and the right to self-determination and liberation. We are appalled that those crimes are continuing not only in violation of the rights of children and peoples to access to education but  amounting  to crimes against humanity.

Calls for an end to the killings and investigation and prosecution of those military forces involved have recently come from the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, The Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, the Benedictine Nuns of St. Scholastica College, Philippine legislators,  Rural Missionaries of the Philippines Northern Mindanao, and international human rights organizations. The Provincial Governor Johnny Pimental of Surigao del Sur has called for the disbandment of paramilitary forces days after the killings. In a pastoral letter of July 25, 2015 the United Church of Christ Philippines called on all churches to “denounce the ongoing militarization and human rights violations in indigenous peoples communities and to strengthen inter-faith and tribal peoples efforts to build unity, justice, and peace”.

This past July, the Dr. Chaloka Beyani, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, published a statement that summarized his findings on his visit to the Philippines, July 21-31, 2015, with these words:  ” It was striking to me that indigenous peoples have been particularly vulnerable to conflict-induced displacement in many regions, particularly in Mindanao. Displacement, whether due to conflict or development, not only destroys the homes and livelihoods of indigenous peoples, but has an incalculable impact on their cultures and ways of life that are part of the rich and diverse heritage of the Philippines that must be protected or otherwise  lost, perhaps forever.”

On September 22, 2015 a joint statements by UN Special Rapporteurs on the rights of indigenous peoples was issued by  Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, and Michel Forst, which states among others:  “Military occupation of civilian institutions and killing of civilians, particularly in places such as schools which should remain safe havens for children from this type of violence, are unacceptable, deplorable and contrary to international human rights and international humanitarian standards.”

UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, also endorsed the two experts’ call, including the request on the Aquino government to accept their urgent requests to visit the country in order to assess the environment in which human rights defenders operate in the Philippines. We are dismayed that those repeated requests  remain ignored and unheeded.  (For the full  statement of the UN special procedures, please follow  this link: http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16481&LangID=E

Signed this 27thth day of October in commemoration of the National Indigenous Peoples Month in the Philippines.

DR. KIM YONG-BOCK (South Korea) OMEGA BULA (Zambia)
Moderator General Secretary
Dr. Kathryn Poethig (United States) Peter Paul Sengson  (Philippines)
Co-Moderator Co-Moderator
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