MANILA — Farcical and hypocritical. This is how Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate described the ongoing hearing on the lumad issues at the House Committee on National Cultural Communities led by Rep. Nancy Catamco.
“How can the lumad bakwits expect an impartial hearing in an atmosphere where Rep. Catamco is the principal accuser, witness and the judge rolled into one?” Rep. Zarate said.
The House inquiry is based on House Resolution 2323 principally authored by Rep. Nancy Catamco, supposedly to probe into the issue of lumads who sought sanctuary at the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Haran Center in Davao City. The lumads left their communities due to militarization and harassment by military-backed paramilitary groups.
However, last July 23, Catamco, backed by at least 500 police, military and paramilitary members, violently raided the Center to eject the lumad bakwits and force them to return to their communities.
“We believe that this farcical hearing will not fairly represent the situation of the lumad bakwits. It is a ploy to whitewash, dilute, and blur the issue of militarization and human rights violations that is driving the lumads away from their homes,” Rep. Zarate said.
“Rep. Catamco should have inhibited herself from hearing the issue of the lumad bakwits,”Rep. Zarate added.
The Bayan Muna lawmaker pointed out that the Catamco resolution is “merely parroting the baseless military of alleged ties of indigenous peoples organizations and progressive groups to rebel groups.”
“This red-baiting alone of Rep. Catamco has already tainted the impartiality of such a hearing. The lumads at Haran were not being held against their will. Time and again, the lumads have stated that they left their communities due to the atrocities committed against them by the military and the paramilitary groups it organized,” Rep. Zarate said.
The Bayan Muna solon also noted how an earlier scheduled hearing and on-site investigation on the lumad situation by the House Committee on Human Rights and initiated by the Makabayan bloc were cancelled by the house leadership and reset to a later schedule in December.
“It is irregular how this hearing came to happen on such short notice. This hearing seems contrived, especially with the the presence of lumads in Manila and their growing number of supporters,” Rep. Zarate further said.
“Around 700 lumads are in Manila for Manilakbayan ng Mindanao 2015. If Congress is serious about addressing the lumad plight, they should be talking to them directly, not the police, the military, the paramilitary groups and the NCIP that have long been deaf of their cries,” Rep. Zarate ended. (PR)
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