Respect our rights to land and life, indigenous peoples asked on World IP Day

Respect our rights to land and life, indigenous peoples asked on World IP Day

August 9 is the international day of the world’s indigenous peoples, but the “occasion is a grim one as human rights violations and ancestral landgrabbing are rampant.” – Piya Macliing Malayao, KAMP.

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
Sidebar: Indigenous peoples’ groups decry use of IPRA and NCIP for development aggression
 
MANILA – “We’re not asking for money, we’re just bringing to the attention of the Aquino government our pleas—that they stop those who try to deceive us and dig up and destroy our lands. We have nowhere else to go to. Our life is tied to the land and mountains,” Lope dela Cruz, 70, a Dumagat from Tanay, Rizal, said in Filipino before members of other indigenous peoples’ group in a rally at the Mendiola Bridge last Tuesday, World’s Indigenous People’s Day.

Garbed in Dumagat attire, Mr dela Cruz had marched with fellow indigenous peoples garbed in the attire of their own tribes. Dela Cruz shared how the Dumagat in Rizal are being denied their livelihood as the mountains are “crawling with state soldiers who are barring the Dumagat from their usual farming activities there.”

“How would we survive if we could not hunt for food or do some farming in the mountains? We have no other source of livelihood,” dela Cruz said, adding that if the mountains were to be continuously denied them, they would die of hunger.

Monico Cayog, 74, regional president of Kalumaran, said Aquino’s non-reference to IPs in his SONA actually spoke a lot.(Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)

Many of the Philippine indigenous peoples have historically lived off the country’s forests in the mountains, practicing nomadic agriculture that allows the forest to regenerate. But that practice and livelihood are now under severe threat, as leaders and representatives of various tribes recount various examples of a national phenomenon – the vicious and massive displacement of indigenous peoples everywhere to give way to giant corporations’ mining, logging and energy projects.

KAMP, the national alliance of indigenous people’s organizations in the Philippines, said, in their statement on the occasion of the international day of the world’s indigenous peoples, large-scale mining is “the largest bane to indigenous peoples.” To date, the group has tracked down nearly 600-thousand hectares of the 1.05-million hectares approved for mining as of June this year as covering ancestral territories. In the Cordilleras in the north, KAMP noted that 60-percent of the entire land area has looming mining operations.

Even the investments in the energy sector that President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III boasted about in his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA) are deemed as disastrous not only to the environment but also to the indigenous peoples, based on KAMP’s study. These energy projects include the Laiban dam in Rizal, the privatization of the Agus-Pulangi dam in Northern and Central Mindanao, and the pending coal mining operations in Surigao del Sur.

State violence vs IPs to secure foreign mining operations

To secure these large-scale mining, logging and energy projects, the government is heavily deploying military and conducting operations in its covered areas, KAMP has noted.

IPs bearing their calls marched to Mendiola in their traditional attire, Aug 9. (Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)

“Mining operations of giant companies have always been coupled with massive deployment of state soldiers,” said Johnny Sawadan, 47, spokesperson of the Cordillera People’s Alliance, in a speech before fellow indigenous peoples at a rally in Manila.

Sawadan said that in their area, numerous battalions of the 501st, 502nd and 503rd Brigade of the Armed Forces of the Philippines are deployed to supposedly protect the citizens but their presence only results in rights violations of the people of Cordillera.

In just one year of the Aquino administration, “eight indigenous peoples were killed by state forces… More than a thousand Lumad fled their homes because of military abuse,” said Piya Macliing Malayao of KAMP. There had also been indigenous peoples subjected to military harassments, illegal arrest and physical injury. Military attacks unfortunately do not differentiate between children and adults, KAMP noted, as they pointed to indigenous children who either witnessed their parents being harassed, or the children themselves got injured and harassed. In the killing last June of Higaonon Arpe Belayong and Solte San-Ogang, two children were also injured..... MORE

Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/08/12/respect-our-rights-to-land-and-life-indigenous-peoples-demanded-on-world-indigenous-people%E2%80%99s-day/