Across Mindanao, Lumad vs. Lumad as firms gobble up land


Children?s vulnerabilities have further been aggravated by reports from the DSWD in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that on August 19, eight kids aged 4 to 16 years old from Indanan, Sulu, were arrested and tortured along with their parents by the military?s Joint Special Operations Force.
"By compromising national patrimony to the Dutch and allowing their companies full and unhampered access to Philippine natural resources, the Arroyo government was able to secure a deal with the Dutch government to go after Prof. Sison and the NDF in the Netherlands," said Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran.

"There is no dignity, in policy nor in practice, in the way our indigenous peoples are being treated. Indigenous communities are being displaced and threatened by mining concessions; they are being massacred supposedly in the name of development. There is an ethnocide going on in this country," Gabriela Rep. Luz Ilagan said.