A member of a US exchange alumni chapter based in Marawi City helps in providing art therapy for children of displaced families in Lanao del Sur. (photo by the provincial crisis management committee supplied by the us embassy)
- Advertisement -

“IT is not the Lumad who are making trouble.”

Tribal chieftain Jerome Succor Aba said this as he responded to President Duterte’s pronouncement that he would personally look for investors to Lumad’s ancestral lands.

- Advertisement -

For Aba, who is co-chairperson of Sandugo-Movement of Moro and Indigenous Peoples for Self-determination, it is the “government and the corporations that are making trouble.”

Following the forced evacuation of 121 Lumad families in a dozen communities of Lianga and San Agustin, Surigao del Sur due to the intensifying military operations, Duterte told the Lumad leaders at a gathering inside the Eastern Mindanao Command headquarters that he would open Lumad lands to investors and that they soon need to evacuate.

“While supposed to be protected by the Philippine Constitution, ancestral lands have long been a source of Malacanang governments’ salivation to sell it to big foreign investors, such as mining and plantations. Only this president had the utmost arrogance to pronounce the sale of our ancestral lands and territories,” Aba said in a statement sent to this paper.

He said he feared that with the Duterte administration’s push for federalism through Charter Change, the “plunder of the resources” from the ancestral lands would be legitimized.

“The proposed new constitution will open up our territories to foreign business ownership,” Aba said.

He said driving the minorities away from their lands would be like taking away their identity and existence.

“(It) will lead to our genocide,” said Aba. “Many of our ancestors, indigenous peoples leaders and kin were massacred to silence the people and let mining corporations, logging and plantations in the protected lands. Such is the case of Lake Sebu Massacre,” Aba said.

On Dec. 3, 2017, seven T’boli and Dulangan Manobo were allegedly killed by soldiers supposedly from the Army’s 27th and 33rd infantry battalions, according to Sandugo. Aba said the community in Barangay Ned, Lake Sebu took back their land from the corporation David M. Consunji Inc. that occupied their land for a coffee plantation.

In a statement sent to this paper, the group claimed that 30 Lumad have so far been killed under the Duterte administration, and at least 30 thousand were forced to evacuate due to aerial bombings allegedly to pave way for foreign corporations and big local businesses.

Aba said, “President Duterte even tried to make an excuse by saying, ‘Ang gobyerno naningkamot… karon gitagaan mo og ancestral domain. Ang problema wala ninyo gamita.’ First, it is not the government that spilled blood for the IPs to have their ancestral lands. It is their forefathers’ blood and the blood of the leaders that were sacrificed so that the government, or at least the Philippine Law, [would] recognize their right to the ancestral lands. Second, they have cultivated their lands for it to be productive to feed their communities and secure the future of the children by building their own schools, which President Duterte threatened to bomb.”

Aba said the Lumad would defend their ancestral lands and territories, and would continue to resist the intrusion of foreign investors and projects, and oppose the Duterte administration’s Charter change move.

He said it was unfortunate because a true government of the people would do all in its power to protect those who have less in life.

But the Duterte administrationm he said, “is instead protecting the interest and profit of those already wealthy at the expense of the marginalized such as us, national minorities. President Duterte is running out of reason to lead the Filipino nation.”

Disclaimer

Mindanao Gold Star Daily holds the copyrights of all articles and photos in perpetuity. Any unauthorized reproduction in any platform, electronic and hardcopy, shall be liable for copyright infringement under the Intellectual Property Rights Law of the Philippines.

- Advertisement -