PH Catholic bishops urged to follow Pope in supporting IP rights

PH Catholic bishops urged to follow Pope in supporting IP rights

By Inday Espina-Varona
July 10, 2015
ABS-CBNnews.com

MANILA - Religious and secular groups working for the protection of Philippine indigenous peoples are urging the country’s bishops to take up Pope Francis’ challenge to safeguard the vulnerable against "unfettered" development.

"The Catholic Church and its leaders in the Philippines should follow Pope Francis call to support the struggles of indigenous peoples and all victims of development that only further enrich wealthy clans and corporations and clans," Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of the environmental group Kalikasan told ABS-CBNnews.com.

Nardy Sabino, secretary-general of the Promotion of Church People's rights, echoed Bautista's call and praised the Pope's display of "humility in accepting lapses in the Catholic Church's treatment of indigenous peoples. "

"It is also a call to the faithful to journey with indigenous peoples and defend the sanctity of life," he added.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines is holding its plenary assembly this weekend.

For the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), the Pope’s message gives hope that the Vatican could prod the country’s church leaders to step up the campaign against human rights violations in areas eyed by big mining, logging and plantation firms.

The RMP is a national inter-diocesan and inter-congregational organization that works with threatened lumad, indigenous peoples in Mindanao. It said 23 indigenous leaders have been killed from October 2014 to June this year, in the Northern Mindanao region alone.

“That is almost three lives mercilessly put out every month,” said the group that was founded in 1960 by the Association of Major Women Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMWRSP). Twenty of the victims were Bukidnon province and three from neighboring Misamis Oriental.

Kalikasan’s Bautista said more than 30 of the 48 environmental activists killed under President Benigno Aquino III’s administration were indigenous leaders.

More environmentalists have been slain under the incumbent government than in the nine years of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration, according to Kalikasan.

Both Kalikasan and the RMN linked most deaths to reprisals for IP opposition to mining operations.

Indigenous people activists stood out at Davao City’s Almendras Gym Thursday night, where farewell rites were held for slain New People’s Army (NPA) commander Leoncio Pitao, known as Parago.

Hundreds of IPs trekked down from Talaingod, Davao Oriental and Compastela Valley, areas where more than 3,000 lumad children have stopped school because of military operations and delayed issuance of government permits for their alternative learning institutions.

Many of these small, isolated schools serve lumad communities and are managed by church groups like the RSM and its allies.

A delegation from the Save Our Schools alliance is currently doing a round of dialogues with government offices and legislators, hoping to stop threats against teachers and students of lumad learning centers.

It handed the Commission on Human Rights a list of the schools reportedly under threat from government soldiers and para-military groups.

“The unabated rise of number of schools being attacked has resulted to the violation of the right to education of not less than 5,000 lumad children all over Mindanao,” said Kharlo Manano, SOS Network lead convener and secretary-general of Salinlahi Alliance for Children’s Concerns. He also expressed hope that Church leaders would send a delegation to join a fact-finding mission to Talaingod and other lumad areas next week.

Bautista said Pope Francis’ apology “justifies and supports the struggle of our indigenous peoples to defend their lands against the resource plunder and ecological destruction by foreign and private corporations.”

He urged Philippine bishops to also help peasant and fisherfolk in opposing large scale mining, agricultural plantations, commercial logging and dirty coal power plants, linking these to land-grabbing and other human rights violations and intense environmental degradation in rural communities.

Sabino said the Pope would give new strength to the struggle of the lumad and other ethnic groups in the Philippines, including Muslims.

"The Pope shows the road to peace since it is well known that conflict in IP areas and other rural communities are usually rooted in the struggle to protect ancestral lands and to assert their right to self-determination," he said.