Politics

Mindanao group slams recruitment of lumads to fight the NPAs

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Mar 05, 2009

By GERMELINA A. LACORTE | Davao Today

Lumads belonging to the Mindanao-wide indigenous peoples group Kalumaran claim theyre being recruited to fight the NPAs against their will. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)

Lumads are made to fight against each other so that big mining companies and plantations can come in and take control of the ancestral domain, said Norma Capuyan, Kalumaran vice chairperson.

Dulphing Ogan, secretary-general of the indigenous peoples group Kalumaran, said that militarization remains to be the greatest problem facing the lumads, who are also fast losing their ancestral lands to big mining and plantation companies without their consent.

In other places, a mining firm operates but there are no plantations, he said, But in all places, the military presence brings about widespread fear.Read on.

My father was tortured, says Ka Emongs daughter

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Mar 05, 2009

By GRACE S. UDDIN and GERMELINA LACORTE | Davao Today

The daughter of the captive New Peoples Army leader Regenaldo Alicaba, Sr. alias Ka Emong said her father could have been tortured during the early part of their ordeal in the hands of the armed men who took them away from their house in Panabo at half past midnight of January 18.

His ears, his knees and feet were swollen, recalled Rizalyn Manguilimotan, 28, when he saw his father for the first time at the Eastern Mindanao Commands headquarters on Camp Panacan.Read on.

Supreme Court dissenters expose unequal Philippine-U.S. ties

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Mar 05, 2009

By the Policy Study, Publication, and Advocacy (PSPA)
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)

The dissenting opinions are valuable because, for once, significant parts of an institution of this country, the Supreme Court, exposed the narrative of inequality between the contracting parties of the Visiting Forces Agreement.Read on.

Arroyo’s Diminishing Options

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Jan 22, 2009

With all remaining options including attempts at another Cha-Cha diminishing the whole nation should brace for some extreme measures being resorted to in 2009.

NPA releases Special Forces army officer as ‘goodwill gesture’

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Jan 06, 2009

Convenors of Interfaith Movement for Peace and the Release of Cammayo and Tumol (IMPACT) welcome 1Lt. Vicente Cammayo (right) during his release on Jan. 6. Escorted by the New People’s Army custodial force and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Cammayo was released in Loreto, Agusan del Sur, after being held as “prisoner of war” for almost two months. According to the Merardo Arce Command of the NPA, Cammayo was the team leader of the 11th company of the 3rd Special Forces Battalion of the AFP who surrendered on Nov. 7 last year when his unit was ambushed by the NPA in Monkayo, Compostela Valley. His release, according to the NPA regional command, is a “gesture of goodwill” in celebration of the Communist Party of the Philippines’s 40th anniversary. (davaotoday.com photos by Barry Ohaylan)