The spate of killings against the lumad people in Mindanao is getting more and more international attention after the United Nations High Commission on Refugees hammered on the government’s alleged “lack of protection” for lumad communities who have been targets of senseless killings by militias in the guise of battling the New People’s Army.
The ‘‘internationalization” of the lumad crisis was denounced by the AFP through its spokesman Colonel Restituo Padilla.
The Department of Foreign Affairs also dismissed calls for Malacañang to allow UN bodies to investigate the “lumad humanitarian crisis”
Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay insisted that the AFP, despite calls by international and local human rights groups to de-militarize lumad communities, has deployed more troops and even intensified forcible recruitments of people into para-military groups.
The UNHCR estimated the number of lumad refugees to more than 6,000 from different parts of Mindanao who were being flashed out by militarization. Of the number, more than 4,000 were staying already for months at the Sport Complex in Tandag City, Surigao del Sur.
The massive uprooting of the lumads from their ancestral lands was triggered by the spate of killings of lumad leaders Dionel Campos and Juvello Sinzo and lumad school executive Emerito Samarca. Prior to their killings, more incidents of killings had been reported including the massacre of five in Bukidnon.
The military denied responsibility in the killings although it acknowledged the killings in Bukidnon which it called a “legitimate encounter” with the NPA. The NPA also owned up to some of the killings.
Just recently, the National Lawyers Guild, a group of human rights lawyers in the US, also echoed the mounting calls for the AFP to pull out its troops from the affected lumad communities. Also, they demanded the disbandment of paramilitary forces such as the Mahagat, Bagaim, Alamara, among others.
“As the President of the Philippines and Commander-in-Chief of the Philippine Armed Forces, we ask that you dismantle the counterinsurgency program, Oplan Bayanihan, which continues to victimize innocent and unarmed civilians,” wrote Azadeh Shahahani, NLG president, in her letter to President Benigno Aquino III.
The US-based Ecumenical Advocacy Network on the Philippines, 40 leaders of faith-based/ecumenical institutions, human rights advocates, distinguished university professors including Prof. Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Leitner Prof. Thomas Pogge of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, and Prof. Fionnuala Ni Aolain of University of Minnesota Law School, called on the US authorities to stop US military aid to the Philippines, in the light of the human rights abuses perpetrated under Pres. Aquino’s watch.
“The statements are the latest expressions of indignation from human rights advocates in different countries over the escalating human rights violations in the Philippines, particularly the killing of indigenous peoples in Mindanao,” Palabay said.
Earlier, church groups and even showbiz celebrity Angel Locsin joined in and urged the AFP to withdraw its soldiers from Lumad communities.
Since September, the International Coalition on Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP), through its member organizations, and other international human rights organizations held protest actions in the offices of Philippine embassies; conducted forums, conferences and symbolic protests; put up information booths; took selfies and groufies and posted pictures online with the hashtag #StopLumadKillings.
Concerned organizations from the following countries also wrote letters and statements on the human rights abuses in the Philippines: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hongkong, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States.
“Mr. Aquino, as you near the end of your term as President of the Republic of the Philippines, your legacy is tainted by corruption and the blood of innocents,” Vancouver-based organizations said in an open letter.
The letter was signed by the Alliance for Peoples Health, Grassroots Women, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, Canada Palestine Association, Kathara Cultural Collective, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network, East Indian Defense Committee, and the Vancouver Solidarity with Ayotzinapa.
Geneva-based Franciscans International, in an oral statement before the 30th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Switzerland, called on the Philippine authorities to “take immediate action to stop the political killings, harassment and militarization in Surigao del Sur as well as in the whole Mindanao region.”
Belgian organizations, especially those that have supported the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV), held forums and mobilized people to send out numerous letters calling for justice. Human rights defenders, civil society and social movement leaders from Brazil, India, Indonesia, Guatemala, Germany, Nigeria and South Africa also expressed their support for the call for justice. The United Church of Canada called for the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of the killings and other human rights violations in Surigao and other parts of the country.
International organization Frontline Defenders, a Dublin-based organization supporting human rights defenders, urged Philippine authorities to “guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in the Philippines are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions.”