Across a swathe of Mindanao’s lushest lands, indigenous children are losing schools and homes

Filipino indigenous children face crisis

by Inday Espina-Varona
July 6, 2015
ABS-CBN News

In Metro Manila, the kids skipped along with friends old and new, helping each other haul heavy school bags, exchanging notes on their lunch packs. In Talaingod, Davao del Norte, they huddled by the roadside, shivering in the rain.

“Dapat nasa eskwela ‘yang mga bata na yan. Hindi n’yo dapat dalhin sa mga ganyang rally. (They are exposed to rain, they have not eaten. Those kids should be in school. They shouldn’t be bought to rallies),” a Peace and Development Media Bureau release quoted Social Work and Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman in reaction to their protest.

Soliman was right to be concerned for their health and safety. ” But she was wrong about the why, and who is violating their rights,” Piya Macliing Malayao, secretary general of KATRIBU (Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas, said in an interview with abs-cbnnews.com

The children of Talaingod were not playing hooky during their late June protest. “The children were at the rally because they had lost their schools,” Malayao said.

Across a swathe of Mindanao’s lushest lands, indigenous children are losing schools and homes. They are also losing parents, whether to the gun or to prison or to flight from threats and harassment.

Close to 3,000 indigenous children from border villages of Davao Oriental, Compostela Valley, Bukidnon and the Agusan provinces are affected by the Department of Education delay in giving permits to their alternative schools.

The military often describes these small, private havens, mostly run by rural missionaries and other faith-based groups, as support
infrastructure of communist rebels. The government has a novel solution to the problem.

“They want to embed soldiers and paramilitary forces in these institutions,” Maglayao pointed out. Her group is part of the Save Our Schools (SOS) network, which has set dialogues this week with Senate and House of Representatives champions of children and indigenous folk, and the Commission on Human Rights.

Rights violations against children in Mindanao increased from 23 incidents in 2013 to 64 last year, according to the Children’s Rehabilitation Center. In the first four months of 2015, the network documented 19 incidents involving thousands of children.

To be able to operate, indigenous schools now have to get a permit from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP). But SOS says the commission has also been ordered to consult first with provincial peace and order councils controlled by the Armed Forces.

Hot spots

Across mountain ranges known for their rich soil and mineral deposits, lumad have drawn the ire of big private corporations and state agencies because of their opposition to big development projects like mining, energy exploration and plantations.

Since President Benigno Aquino III assumed power in 2010, 48 environmentalists have been killed, according the group Kalikasan.

Of these, 35 were campaigning against mining and the logging of watershed areas when killed. Nineteen of the victims were indigenous activists from Mindanao.

The most blood spilled was linked to Glencore-Xstrata-SMI, a merger between the Swiss commodity producer and trader and local investors led by the powerful Alcantara clan.

The trail of blood has sprawled from South Cotabato to Davao del Sur, I (South Cotabato) since 1992. Since 2010, the conflict has killed 10 people, including an Italian missionary priest, and intermittently displaced thousands of families.

At stake are 24,000 hectares of ancestral lands, forests, and agricultural lands of indigenous people and peasants. The prize for investors: an estimated 2.4 billion metric tons of copper-gold deposits.

Glencore announced late June that it was discarding its shares in the Tampakan project. But indigenous folk know they do not have the luxury to savor that victory, says Kalikasan national coordinator Clemente Bautista.

Local investors have less qualms trampling on people’s rights. They are also in bed, he adds, with top government officials.

A Reuters story carried by an engineering news website quotes Mines and Geoscience Bureau (MGB) head Leo Jasareno welcoming an announcement by Indophil "to move the project forward."

The Philippine has a mining ban, and local governments rejected the Tampakan operation, but the national environmental agency green-lighted the venture.

Other hot spots in indigenous people’s decades-long battle crawl across the rugged boundaries of Davao Oriental, Compostela Valley, Davao City’s environs, Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental, Agusan del Norte, Agusan del Sur and Surigao del Sur.

In Talaingod alone, the rights group Karapatan reports ofpersistent raids of homes, saturation drives, zoning ang hamletting, the use of civilians as shields during military operations and the use of schools for military camps since March 2014.

The violations of of human rights coincided with stepped up operations of the Armed Forces in the tri-boundaries of Bukidnon, Talaingod and Kapalong.

The sound of guns

Karapatan documented eight cases from March to April 2014 in Sitios Nalubas, Laslasakan, Nasilaban and Dulyan in Brgy. Palma Gil and Sitios Tibucag and Km 30 in Brgy. Dagohoy, Talaingod. More than 1,300 Manobo folk made a six-day trek to Davao City to seek refuge from aerial bombardment of their communities.

In October 2014, soldiers from the 60th Infantry Battalion and the paramilitary group Alamara took over the Butay Elementary School in Sitio Nasilaban. Then they spent a week firing their guns the Salugpongan Ta ‘Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center (STTICLC). Close to 300 students from both schools were traumatized by the ordeal.

Attacks on Talaingod schools continued until December 2014 and surged further in January, forcing 300 residents to flee again.

Mid-March this year was another nightmare for 25-year old Geraldine Restituta and more than 30 students of the Salugpongan Ta ‘Tanu Igkanugon Community Learning Center (SSTICLC) in Barangay Panansalan, Compostela town.

They were preparing dinner on March 16 when soldiers from the 67th infantry battalion arrived and herded the males of their communities. An Army officer announced the impending arrival of development. But first, he said, they needed to establish peace on behalf of the Agusan Petroleum Minerals Inc. (AGPET) at ng Oil Palmm, whose projects would provide jobs to locals.

And then came an alleged threat that made Restituta’s blood run cold: “Kung ma-isnaypan kami or ma-ambush mi sa mga NPA, idadamay naming lahat nga mga bata sa eskwelahan! (If the New People’s Army hit us, all the children in the school will pay the consequences)."

The following day, soldiers did a census of all the residents, taking down livelihoods and occupations and organizations. They also began interrogating teachers about what their teaching methods.

Insurgency

Karapatan said the soldiers taunt lumad children in the alternative schools, calling them the spawns of rebels. They stalk the teachers, accusing them of being communist cadres. The religious groups that operate the alternative schools and help indigenous peoples have also paid with the lives of priests and lay leaders.

AFP public affairs office head, Lt. Harold Cabunoc, said the charge is false. The military, he said, is just helping the education department to “promote the Bayanihan spirit.” He cited soldiers’ participation in clean-up, repairs and maintenance of the schools, medical missions and sports clinics.

Nobody disputes that the NPA is at its strongest in the Caraga region and around Davao Oriental and Compostela, the guerrilla front headed by the recently slain rebel leader, Leoncio Pitao (Kumander Parago).

But as in other areas in Mindanao, including those with a strong Muslim rebel presence, it is the vacuum in governance coupled with abuse of power – often highlighted by land-grabbing – that fueled conflict.

The lumad feel the vacuum keenly. Nine out of 10 lumad children have no access to education. This breach in education and health was filled by religious groups and other NGOs. More than 146 alternative schools and programs provide education to lumad children, as well as adult literacy classes.

The Alcantaras also figure in the Talaingod conflict. Malayao said encroachment on lumad land started in the mid-1980s with their logging operations. The Alcantara clan was a close ally of former President Corazon Aquino and that friendship extends to her son, the incumbent head of state.

In the early 1990s, tribes in the area decided to hold a pangayao, a tribal war against Alcantara and sons, which they accused of forcing them from their ancestral lands and was in the processing of expanding its operations. The indigenous people won that round.

Now, an American mining company wants to start operations in the area. There are also energy projects in the offing, plantation projects and applications for new logging concessions in remote but picturesque Talaingod, Malayao said.

The municipality, which lies 89 km north of Davao City has an estimated 6,000 hectares of virgin forest. It’s municipal development council has identified areas for rubber, pineapple and abaca plantations.

It also has rich water resources, including the 60-meter Kalapatan Falls and the seven-hectare Kilomayon Lake.