Brad Adams, Asia director of HRW reacted over this report. “Government forces should not be making blanket assumptions about whether individuals are rebels based on whether they have proper documents or not. Officials can check those leaving the conflict zone, but they need to ensure that civilians have safe passage and are not put at unnecessary risk.”
As strong words flow and fighting continues in the city, for evacuees living off at city’s main grandstand, they only have memories of their ordeal and a craving to survive.
Benjie Planos, a Bisaya settler living among the Manobos, and other leaders of KASAKA had been receiving death threats from the Philippine Army’s 26th Infantry Battalion and the paramilitary group Bagani. the militarization, KASAKA leaders said, is linked with the entry of New Britain Palm Oil Ltd, which is eyeing KASAKA’s ancestral domain.
By JOHN RIZLE L. SALIGUMBA Davao Today Zamboanga City – Evacuees who were gathered at the city’s Joaquin F. Enriquez…
There is yet no ceasefire in place, consistent with what President Benigno Aquino III said yesterday that since Day One, the government is bent on launching military operations. But he clarified later that the primary objective of the military operations is the “unnecessary loss of lives.”
Five Philippine Red Cross volunteers were injured here Friday in an exploding shell believed fired from a rifle, in a new twist in the stand-down between government security forces and armed followers of the Moro National Liberation Front.
“Government is fooling the students and the people when [President Benigno Aquino] said that government has no more fund for education, when he just distributed it to his political supporters,” said Arian Jane Ramos, Alyansa ng mga Aktibong Kabataan sa UP Mindanao (ANAK UP Min).
“Government corruption is an injustice to the people. Taxpayers are paying them salaries at 80 to 90 thousand monthly while it will probably take a lifetime for an impoverished farmer and lumad to earn it,” Paracha said.
“The Moro question remains to be a complex problem and unless the roots of armed revolution are addressed and the Moro people’s right to self-determination is sincerely and genuinely upheld, it will pose as a gnawing wound in Philippine realpolitik,” said InPeace Mindanao chair Bishop Felixberto Calang IFI
Groups in Davao City will hold simultaneous activities in line with Wednesday’s “Edsa Tayo” prayer rally and Friday’s protest march.
