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.
Communists in Mindanao say the deep economic crisis of capitalist countries like the US is a favorable opportunity to strengthen the Communist Party and to raise the people’s struggle to a higher level.
The militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) fears the government has not entirely given up on the controversial memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD), which the group sees as a ploy to change the Constitution to extend the term of the President.
People in the Visayas and Luzon are joining calls to stop the war in Mindanao after the peace caravan that traveled the whole stretch of the archipelago for seven days had open their eyes to understand the conflict for the first time, Gus Miclat, the executive director of IID, said upon the return of the caravan here.
The Bangsamoro’s age-old problem had something to do with self-governance. The Bangsamoro people, who used to be under the rule of a Sultanate, lost their self- governance when Spain included Mindanao in the sale of the Philippines to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1898, despite the fact that Spain never really conquered Mindanao as part of the colony.
Malaysian Consul Mustafa Kamal urged peace groups to keep working for a peace formula that will be acceptable to everybody after the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) failed to generate support from some sectors in Mindanao.
Pastor Jurie Jaime, secretary-general of PCPR-Davao, urged the next US President to stop pledging millions of US dollars in aid to the Philippine military that has yet to answer for the brutal killings, enforced disappearances and illegal arrests of hundreds of activists.
