Friends – Visit our petition and website re: Rescind mining militias in the Philippines!
website: www.pnoylovesminingmilitias.org
Thank you for your support and solidarity!
Canada Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights Group and Interactionable.org
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Peace…means the total well-being of persons
and communities, a condition of wholeness.
Dear NGO partners from Theresa-laden Team:
I got those very sad news about Father Pop`s death from many NGO partners in Mindanao. That`s why I send my words of condolence in one letter to all of you.
I feel how much you are touched about this killing of a man, who dedicated his life for the Indigenous People who have no lobby, no rights, no acceptance in their own country.
How about your “democratic ” land, which solves their problems with murdering holy people???? How about a Catholic country, which forgot all about Jesus’ words of justice, peace, forgiveness, respect and neighbour love and enemy love !
God gave them a paradise with all the beauty of nature and beauty of people and they made a hell out of it! No security, no home feeling for most of the indigenous people, fear and chaotic situations all over the places!
The only thing we can do is to stand behind all the struggling people in your country , to hope , and to act together with you that this horrible situation will stop one day, to pray that your Government finds back to the root of his religion, when God created the Philippines and and he saw that it was good !
In the name of Theresa-laden Team of Switzerland
Yours In Solidarity,
Monika Baumann
Director, Theresa-Ladeli
Bern, Switzerland
KIDAPAWAN CITY – People from all walks of life — Christians, lumads, activists, among others — demanded justice as they accompanied slain Italian priest Father Fausto Tentorio on Tuesday to his final resting place in Arakan, a hinterland town in North Cotabato.
Tentorio was shot dead by an unidentified gunman inside the church compound in Arakan town on October 17.
He was buried at the cemetery at the Bishop’s Palace near the grave of another Italian priest, Father Tullio Favali, who was murdered in the 1980s, also in North Cotabato.
Both priests are members of the Pontificio Instituto Missioni Estere (PIME or Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions).
Aside from the two priests, another PIME priest was also murdered in Mindanao, Father Salvatore Carzedda who was killed in Zamboanga City in 1992.
The PIME Fathers have been serving remote communities in the Philippines since 1968.
Tentorio, 59, said to be a staunch anti-mining advocate, has been serving in the Philippines since 1978, a year after he was ordained to the priesthood.
Funeral procession for Tentorio
On Tuesday morning, a funeral procession was held for Tentorio after the Requiem Mass presided over by Kidapawan Diocese Bishop Romulo dela Cruz, PIME missionaries, and other priests.
The bishop noted that Tentorio started his missionary work in North Cotabato just months after Favali was killed in 1985 by a para-military assassin in Tulunan town.
Meanwhile, activists from different provinces in Mindanao also held a funeral march along the highway after the Mass, demanding an investigation into Tentorio’s killing.
The activists also asked the government for the immediate pullout of military troops in Arakan town and other areas in North Cotabato in Mindanao, where several clashes between soldiers and rebels happened in the last few days.
Earlier on Tuesday, Catholic bishops urged the Aquino administration to probe his death and solve the case as soon as possible.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said the government must act decisively and swiftly, and investigate thoroughly every angle of the murder.
“How long will evil men continue to plot against those who courageously protest against the sufferings of the poor and the degradation of God’s creation?” outgoing CBCP president Nereo Odchimar said in a statement, according to an article on AsiaNews.
For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV
Searching for Tentorio’s killer
According to the the “Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) Fausto,” Tentorio sustained 10 gunshot wounds in different parts of his body.
A week after the killing, Chief Supt. Lester Camba, head of the SITG Fausto, said they do not have a sketch yet of the priest’s killer.
“What we have right now is the sketch of a male person who could give a lead to the killing. This person was monitored to have been looking for Father Tentorio for four times since January,” said Camba.
According to Camba, reports saying the police had already released a cartographic sketch of the priest’s killer were not true.
“I have not said that in any interview I had with any media. What I claimed was that the computerized criminal illustration we have right now was not the suspect’s sketch,” he said.
However, Camba said he is not discounting the possibility that the person in the sketch that the police might also be involved in the killing.
“What would be his reason for asking the priest’s whereabouts? Since January, the same person was looking for Father Tentorio for four times. He only asked one question: ‘Where is Father Fausto?’ After knowing that the priest was inside the chapel, he would leave the place. So that raised a doubt,” said Camba.
The STIG Fausto has at least eight witnesses — three church workers, three public school teachers, and a mother and her child.
However, these witnesses have yet to execute their affidavits so that the Police could use the documents for the eventual filing of charges against Tentorio’s killer or killers.
Lived and died among his own people
In his homily during the Requiem Mass at the Our Lady Mediatrix of All Grace Cathedral, Dela Cruz said Tentorio loved the people of Arakan where he lived, worked, and died.
“I know that even if we lost Father Fausto, we are not without hope…. I know we will also have another resurrection,” Dela Cruz said.
The bishop said Tentorio survived many attempts on his life.
In 2003, Tentorio had to seek refuge in another village in Arakan when a group of armed militia was said to be looking for him.
In 2006, later, soldiers in full battle gear allegedly raided the parish where Father Tentorio was holding a dental and medical mission.
Tentorio was allegedly accused of supporting the rebel movement and keeping in his convent a number of wounded rebels.
Tentorio’s legacy: ‘Do justice, show mercy’
In his last will and testament, Tentorio said he wanted the following words to be written on his tombstone, “You’re told, oh Man, what is good… to do justice; to show mercy; and to walk humbly with my God.”
Long before he was murdered, Tentorio already prepared for the worst, telling his friends that he wanted to be buried in a coffin made out of his favorite mahogany tree, one he had planted in their convent in the 1980s.
As an ultimate act of honor, the parishioners have cut down the tree and made a coffin for Tentorio.
“This is what Father Fausto did that we considered his legacy: He showed mercy to the lumads in Arakan town. He sought justice for them when their lands were grabbed from them; when they were harassed by men in arms; when their own government seemed to abandon them,” Dela Cruz said.
During Monday’s vigil, village chieftain and tribal leader Gayotin Tomanding said Tentorio’s death was a big loss to their tribe.
“When we were bereft of assistance of the government, we sought help from Father Fausto. And he would always be there for us. He would always lend a helping hand. He would always give us food if we need to nourish our body. He would give us farm tractors if we wanted to plow our fields… When he died, part of us also died,” Tomanding said in the vernacular.
Tomanding was also in tears when he recounted how Tentorio risked his life just to protect him in the past. – (by MALU CADELINA MANAR, VVP, GMA News)
Press Statement – President Aquino’s sincerity in the peace negotiation, both with the MILF and NDFP, is put to a tough test today in light of the renewed political crisis in Mindanao.
The 57 extrajudicial killings highlighted by the recent murder of Fr. Fausto Tentorio under his one-year old administration; the NPA attacks against three destructive mining companies operating in Surigao; and the ongoing AFP-MILF armed confrontations in Basilan, Zamboanga Sibuguey and Lanao, should have prompted President Aquino to take more decisive steps to resume the stalled peace talks with the MILF and the NDFP.
Impunity and worsening human rights violations, destructive large scale mining operations in indigenous people’s ancestral lands and militarization, are long standing issues of the people that need to be discussed and addressed in the peace talks. Social and justice issues are roots of the decades-old armed rebellion in Mindanao that President Aquino promised to resolve.
Military solution, like all-out war, now pushed by the followers and loyalists of two militarist Presidents of the Philippines, Marcos and Estrada, both ousted by people’s uprisings, has been historically proven to be ineffective and anti-people. The likes of Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Panfilo Lacson are incorrigible fascists and unrepentant human rights violators.
Amidst calls from his allies to launch all out war against the MILF and to end the peace talks, President Aquino reiterated that he would “continue with its peace negotiation with the MILF”. The interfaith rights group, Moro-Christian People’s Alliance (MCPA), challenges the President to translate his words into action because his men’s actions on the ground show differently.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) headed by Secretary Ging Deles and the negotiating panels headed by Atty. Marvic Leonen (for the GPH-MILF peace talks) and Atty. Alex Padilla (for the GPH-NDF peace talks) attack and accuse the MILF and NDF of derailing the peace talks. Until now, the peace talks are stalled and there are no concrete signs that these will progress and move forward.
Now the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with his tacit directive, have started ‘pursuit operations against criminal elements’’ signaled with massive air strikes. President Aquino has categorically stated that he will not wage all out war against the MILF but his all out justice operations has all the characteristics of Estrada and Arroyo’s all-out war against the MILF and the Moro people.. The MCPA assails Aquino’s call for All Out Justice as a veiled All Out War.#
Reference:
Antonio Liongson
Spokesperson, Moro-Christian People’s Alliance
Salvaged Italian priest Father Fausto Tenorio had been very vocal in protests against two mining projects that would dislocate Manobos in Arakan Valley, North Cotabato and B’laans in Tampakan, South Cotabato. Prime suspect in the murder, according to news reports, are paramilitary forces.
A barrage of Church protests was led by Marbel Bishop Dinualdo Guttierez, who said, “The government should no longer allow mining like this. I don’t know if they (mining firms) are hiring killers or whatever, but I am worried that one of us would get killed again.”
Mary Manazanan of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) said over Radio Veritas, “The killing … should signal him (Noynoy) to declare a stop on foreign mining in the country.” She cites many similar salvagings of Church workers and journalists where investigations had not yielded any results.
The National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), a coalition of non-Catholic Christian sects, issued a statement which read, “It is not unknown that Father Tentorio spoke against military presence (in tribal villages and). He (Fr. Tentorio) spoke loudly that the state’s security forces have become the tool for people’s insecurity.”
Even Muhammad Ameen, chair of the secretariat of the rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said, “This is brutality and savagery that no civilized men or groups could possible do. (Inquirer, October 19, frontpage).
The proposed Tampakan mine that Fr. Tentorio is protesting against is the largest mining project in the country today, and one of the largest worldwide, a mind-boggling 10,000 hectares, covering four provinces (South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Davao del Sur, and Saranggani) in two Regions, XI and XII. It is a project of the Swiss-British multinational Xstrata in partnership with the local Sagittarius Mining Inc. (SMI). The project has a history of human rights violations, including a tribal protestor shot by a security guard of the mining firm at point blank range, according to interviewed residents.
The proposed tailings dams, the largest in Philippine history, making the infamous Marcopper dam in Marinduque look like a kiddie pool affair, sits at the highest peak. If they burst, toxic wastes would threaten 6 rivers and more than 100,000 hectares of rich agricultural land, at the very heart of Mindanao’s bread basket.
The alleged $6 million dollars the government will earn from the 25-year permit will be dwarfed ten fold by the cost of massive agricultural dislocation in four bread basket provinces in case the dams break. Xstrata hopes to extract 375,000 tons of copper and 360,000 tons of gold per year for the first 17 years of operations. The bulk of this windfall would be expatriated. The government’s $6 million would be a trickle, at such high social and economic cost to its own people.
Xstrata gave the assurance that their dams will be built at state-of-the-art global safety standards. Thirty three such ‘accident proof’ dams have burst worldwide, 16 of them in the U.S. In the Philippines, we also have a good track record of broken dams. Earthquake data reveals that the Xstrata tailings dam sits right underneath a fault. Mining firms build dams as permanent structures, but ironically they are not. In time, they succumbed to old age and die, often years after the mining firms have raked huge profits and left. One day, when everyone is asleep, the killer dam strikes, a deluge of toxic wastes cascading down productive valleys nurturing communities since pre-history, rendering them irreversibly and permanently beyond rehabilitation. Such was the case at the Stave Valley Killer Dam in Northern Italy.
Xstrata came up with a 3,000-page Environmental Impact Assessment, allegedly costing a staggering $75 million. In spite of such costs and details, Clive Wicks, environment consultant for the (International Union for the Conservation of Nature.) (IUCN), an international green organization, said the EIA was flawed, having excluded affected downstream communities as stakeholders. Wicks quotes the very EIA where engineers have warned of the grave risks of the dams.
In spite of these warnings and the fact that there is an existing Provincial ban on open-pit mining, Xstrata is not fazed, confident of its powerful influence to either skirt around the law or have it amended. Indeed, Xstrata’s influence on government is hinted by the fact that the Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision saying that Xstrata’s contract with the government, the Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) was unconstitutional.
Xstrata has succeeded in splintering the Lumad communities in the mine site. Those directly affected at the top of the hill refuse to be bought by Xstrata sweeteners, such as temporary employment and social benefits. Those at the bottom of the hill have embraced Xstrata, appointing their own chieftains and organizing ‘pseudo-tribal organizations’ as visible fronts of the mining project.
The project is scheduled to have its Environment Compliance Certificate (ECC) approved by early 2012, the go signal for the plant to be built, which would hopefully be operational by 2016. It is not too late for Noynoy to intervene in behalf of millions of affected communities in four provinces to scrap the project completely, and pre-empt this largest every potential environment disaster. The Philippine Misereor Partnership, Inc. (PMP), in a press statement, is requesting Noynoy “to reconsider its recent decision of backing the formation and deployment of militias to beef up security for mining operations.” Jaybee Garganera of Alyansa Tigil Mina accused the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) of ‘washing hands’ in the affair, with Secretary Ramon Paje said, “We are harmonizing local and national policies toward a more friendly regime for the mining industry.” How about being more friendly to our very own indigenous communities.#
(By Bernie Lopez, Lifted from Opinyon Magazine, “Eastwind Journals” Column, Oct. 24, 2011)
