AT least 100 evacuees from Marawi City have joined indigenes in bringing to the national capital their stories of displacement and intensifying violations of human rights under martial law in Mindanao.
In a press statement, Tindig Rabnao chair Asliah Amapuan said Maranao leaders under their group will join the lumad and minority leaders in the “Lakbayan ng Pambansang Minorya Para sa Sariling Pagpapasya at Makatarungang Kapayapaan.”
“Our kin have been tortured and killed. Others have just disappeared. And we continue to confront threats, harassment, and intimidation in the evacuation centers,” said Asliah Ampuan of Tindeg Ranao said in the statement.
The Marawi evacuees will join some 200 Lumad evacuees displaced from their communities because intense militarization under President Rodrigo Duterte’s martial rule in the island.
Bae Jocelyn Agdahan of the Lumad group Tindoga (Tribal Indigenous Oppressed Group Association) of Quezon, Bukidnon joined the Lakbayan to press for justice for the death of their community leader Renato Anglao.
Anglao led his community in reclaiming their ancestral lands from a local politician who is a known pineapple contract grower for Del Monte Philippines Inc. Anglao is one of the leaders of the same Lakbayan in 2016 before he was extra-judicially killed on Feb. 3 this year.
“We are being killed, our ancestral lands robbed, our culture continuously bastardized, and we cannot just keep silent. We will go to Manila to register our legitimate demands as discriminated peoples, and to amplify over and over again that Mindanawans are not happy, in fact, are outraged, with President Duterte’s martial law declaration,” said Agdahan. (lito rulona)
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