Talinis Ultramarathon Met With Protest

Talinis Ultramarathon Met With Protest

by | Nov 15, 2019 | Human Supremacy, Obstruction & Occupation

Editors note: this piece comes from allies in the Arkipelago (decolonized term for the Philippines) who are engaged in ecological struggles and wish to highlight the detrimental effects of mass culture in outdoor recreation.

By Aidalyn IAmMoutara

This is what happened during the #TalinisUltramarathon this morning, October 6. Protesters blocked the entrance of Apolong trail when two truckloads (dumptruck) of participants started to arrived for the 25k and 17k category since other categories have started the previous night.

The blockade lasted for two hours. The blocking group is not an organization nor any entity. They were individuals who believed that a single race event composing of 333 runners going up in a span of less than 24 hours is too much for Mt. Talinis.

However, the race continued after a peaceful resolution with the blocking protesters.

Meanwhile on the other side, LGU Dauin was also blocking their jurisdiction (trails inside Dauin) since the organizers fail to coordinate with them for the said race event.

I believe this is the first of its kind. A race event met with protest. This sends out a powerful message to everyone, that we are serious in our convictions to protect Mt. Talinis Range and uphold the rights of the locals.

Events like this should benefit the host communities and not the other way around.

Environmental Protector Murdered in the Philippines

Environmental Protector Murdered in the Philippines

by | Sep 10, 2019 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Human Supremacy

Image: PRO MIMAROPA

by Liam Campbell

Forest ranger Bienvinido “Toto” Veguilla, Jr. was murdered last week while attempting to stop illegal loggers from ransacking a section of forest in the Philippines. Veguilla was on a routine patrol in the Sitio Kinawagan, Barangay Pasadeña region when he and fellow rangers discovered a group of illegal loggers using a chainsaw and other equipment to destroy the ecosystem for profit. After confiscating their equipment Veguilla and his team departed for their station, but were followed by the illegal loggers and eventually attacked. Unfortunately, Veguilla was unable to escape and was hacked to death by approximately six men.

Veguilla’s murder is a great loss to conservation efforts in the Philippines; he was known as one of the most diligent, hardworking, and courageous members of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). He is not the first ranger to be murdered — in 2017, captain Ruben Arzaga was also murdered by illegal loggers in retaliation for his conservation efforts.

These brave individuals and their colleagues risk their lives on a daily basis to protect Earth’s dwindling ecosystems against destruction, often facing death threats and severe retaliation. Sometimes it is easy for environmental activists in priveleged countries to lose sight of the brutal realities facing their comrades in other parts of the world. Next time you hear someone moralizing about the virtues or necessity of pacifism, remember that those notions are an extreme luxury and that the individuals who preach those sermons are generally far removed from risking life or limb.

UN, Indigenous Leaders Condemn Philippines For Placing Special Rapporteur on “Terrorist Hit List”

UN, Indigenous Leaders Condemn Philippines For Placing Special Rapporteur on “Terrorist Hit List”

by | Mar 12, 2018 | Repression at Home

     by Terri Hansen / Cultural Survival

What do you do when a country places a United Nations Special Rapporteur on a terrorist hit list?

If you’re the UN, you hit back.

A petition filed February 21 in a Manila court by apparently unstable President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines labels Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ‘a terrorist.’

Human Rights Watch saw the petition this week and called it “a virtual hit list.”

The legal petition accuses 600 people including Victoria Tauli-Corpuz  and Joan Carling, co-convener of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group on Sustainable Development, and several other Indigenous human rights defenders as being affiliated with “terrorist and outlawed organizations, associations and/or group of persons” connected to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA).

“There’s a long history in the Philippines of the state security forces and pro-government militias assassinating people labelled as NPA members or supporters,” Human Rights Watch Philippines researcher Carlos Condehe said.

“These attacks cannot go unanswered. The U.N. Human Rights Council must take a position,” UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein told news reporters on Friday. “This sort of comment really is unacceptable, unacceptable.”

Although Zeid bluntly stated the president of the Philippines “is in need of a psychiatric evaluation,” there are serious concerns for their safety.

Tauli-Corpuz, a member of the Kankanaey Igorot people in the Philippines, believes she was targeted for statements she made on December 27, 2017 to the Human Rights Council. The Council has entrusted her to provide reports of alleged violations of Indigenous people’s rights worldwide.

Tauli-Corpuz called the allegations, “baseless, malicious and irresponsible,” and added she was consulting with lawyers on legal courses of action to clear her name and make accountable “those who put my life and security at risk.”

Human rights organizations have charged the Philippines army with harassing and killing the Indigenous Lumad people on Mindanao Island who have been caught in the middle of a communist insurgency. The terrorist list is the most recent move by the Philippines in a long conflict between defenders of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and the Duterte administration, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) says.

Under Duterte’s administration, Philippine Indigenous Peoples’ organizations have recorded at least 62 illegal arrests, 21 political prisoners, 20 incidents of forced evacuation affecting 21,966 Indigenous Peoples and more than a hundred others facing trumped-up charges and forcible closure of 34 Lumad schools from July 2016 to December 2017.

“The Government of the Philippines regularly and increasingly threatens and harasses Indigenous Peoples,” Julie Koch, executive director of IWGIA said in a statement. “We are extremely worried about finding some of our long-term partners on the list. We fear for their personal safety.”

One of IWGIA’s partners on the list is Cordillera Peoples Alliance, with co-founder Joan Carling and several other members named. Carling said she expects to take legal action, and as well expects the Philippine government to “ensure the physical safety of those of us who are listed in the petition, as called for by UN experts.”

Targeting Tauli-Corpuz provoked outrage among her fellow rapporteurs.

“We are shocked that the Special Rapporteur is being targeted because of her work defending the rights of Indigenous Peoples,” said Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, and Catalina Devandas Aguilar, chair of the Coordination Committee of the Special Procedures.

The international human rights and Indigenous community is expressing solidarity with Tauli-Corpuz and Carling, while condemning the Philippine government.

“Vicky is an ardent advocate for Indigenous rights around the world, not a terrorist,” Amazon Watch executive director Leila Salazar-López told Cultural Survival. She said the accusations against her were very worrisome. “We will stand with her as she has stood with Indigenous Peoples and land defenders for decades.”

Patricia Gualinga, Kichwa women’s leader from the community of Sarayaku, Ecuadorian Amazon told Cultural Survival, “I stand in solidarity with my sister Vicky.”

“When a woman is clear in her defense of women’s and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, authoritarian governments use their power to criminalize, threaten, and persecute us through the law, as has happened here in the Amazon,” she said.

The growing list of those expressing solidarity with Tauli-Corpuz and Carling include the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, the Cultural Conservancy, the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Tero Mustonen of Snowchange in Finland, Tebtebba, Indigenous Climate Action Network, Luisa Maffi of Terralingua, Tarcilla Rivera Zea and Jesús Fuentes as members of United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and a growing list of others as they learn the news.

The Editorial Director at ČálliidLágádus – ForfatternesForlag said, “I am horrified that human rights defenders like UN Special Rrapporteur for Indigenous Peoples Human Rights are being targeted like this. Vicky is being accused for terrorism by Filipino authorities. This brave, warm-hearted, clear-spoken woman is a defender of humanity, no terrorist!”

Tauli-Corpuz is one of the Indigenous leaders who helped draft the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 1993 and then lobbied for it for more than 20 years until the UN General Assembly finally adopted the treaty in 2007.

She has founded and managed various nonprofits that raise awareness about social ills, climate change, and the advancement of Indigenous Peoples’ and women’s rights. In 1996, she founded Tebtebba, an international organization that promotes Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives on key issues such as human rights, sustainable development, climate change, and the environment.

Related: Cultural Survival Stands in Solidarity with Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and Joan Carling in the Wake of Unfounded Terrorist Accusations

— Terri Hansen is a member of the Winnebago Tribe. She has covered Indigenous Peoples’ issues since 1993. Hansen’s focus is science and the environment. She has reported on climate change in tribal communities since 2008, and on Indigenous participation in the annual UN climate summits since the COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Follow her on Twitter @TerriHansen.

Philippines: Stop the Lumad Killings

Philippines: Stop the Lumad Killings

by | Jan 2, 2018 | Colonialism & Conquest

     by  / Intercontinental Cry

The Lumad are Indigenous Peoples in the southern Mindanao region of the Philippines. The term Lumad is short for Katawhang Lumad (Literally: “indigenous people”), a description officially adopted by delegates of the Lumad Mindanao Peoples Federation founding assembly on June 26, 1986. This grew out of a political awakening among tribes during the martial law regime of President Marcos and reflects the collective identity of 18 Lumad ethnic groups. The assembly’s main objectives was to achieve self-determination and governance for their member-tribes within their ancestral domain in accordance with their culture and customary laws.

The Lumad have a traditional ancestral concept of land ownership which is communal private property. Community members have the right utilize any piece of unoccupied land within the communal territory. Lumad ancestral lands include rain forests, hunting grounds, cultivated and uncultivated land and valuable mineral  resources (copper, nickel, gold, chromite, coal, gas, cement) below the land.

For decades the Lumad had been forced to physically defend their right to control their ancestral territories against corporate plunder and militarization. Unable to match up to the armed forces of the government and profiteers the Lumad have had to flee their communities; their land has been seized by multinational corporations and logging companies. Wealthy Filipino migrants and multinationals are planting and exporting palm oil, bananas, rubber and pineapple.

Unequipped to understand the modern land tenure system, the Lumad have established schools in their communities supplying knowledge to young adults and youth on how to protect their rights, property and culture. While these schools have always posed a threat,  President Duterte has taken the unprecedented step of directing the Department of Education to close them down and has also encouraged the killing and arrest of Lumad teachers, which continues to go unpunished.

The history of violence and unwarranted (extrajudicial) killings of Lumad at the hands of military, paramilitary, and private security forces is in the hundreds, with the arrest and torture Lumad activists in the thousands. Fifty-six percent of Philippine military have been deployed to the Mindanao region. Today many of the Lumad have sought safety and shelter in evacuation centers where they and other victims of war are crowded into small spaces, lacking sanitary conditions and food, and endure harassment by local police including sexual harassment.

Bolstered by the recent visit of Trump to the Philippines who has promised and delivered increased in military funding to the Philippines, President Duterte has extended martial law on the whole island of Mindanao under the guise of war on terrorism and drugs and has launched a full-scale assault on social justice activists throughout the Philippines, including the Lumad people.

Where there is oppression there is resistance. The Lumad have organized protest actions against mining, extrajudicial killings, and the militarization of their communities, and have led “Manilakbayan” people’s caravans from Mindanao to Manila where they have built unity with Moro and peasant communities and other oppressed sectors in Mindanao and, together, have brought these people’s demands to the national capital. There are some young Lumad that say, because the repression suffered by their community is so bad, at times they consider joining the New Peoples Army. In fact, some Lumad do engage in armed resistance to defend their ancestral lands, as Lumad have done since time immemorial, from fending off logging corporations using spears and native weapons to taking up arms with the New Peoples Army as part of the decades long revolutionary struggle led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The Lumad struggle continues to take many forms—and as state repression and encroachment on ancestral lands has worsened, Lumad resistance has continued to grow.

In October of 2016, the Lumad people sent messages of solidarity to the tribes and Water Protectors at Standing Rock as they clearly understood the universal common struggle of indigenous to protect the land.

In this moment of intense violence, the International Interfaith Humanitarian Mission 3.0 proposes the following recommendations for the victims of the military operations in Marawi City: Continue relief, medical services and psychosocial intervention for the victims; a just recovery and reparations for homes and properties destroyed; make the Duterte government accountable for the death, displacement of residents and destruction of Warawi City; put people over profit in the rehabilitation of Warawi so that the residents can return to their original communities not profit driven development.

Pam Tau Lee is Chair of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) – U.S.

Increased Militarization under Martial Law Threatens Lumad Teachers in the Philippines

Increased Militarization under Martial Law Threatens Lumad Teachers in the Philippines

by | Jul 16, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest

Featured image: This month, hundreds of Lumad evacuated their homes out of fear of being attacked by the military. Photo: ALCADEV

     by  / Intercontinental Cry

Last May, the government of the Philippines announced the decision to subjugate the southern island of Mindanao to Martial Law. Now, the state is using its repressive apparatus to continue its attacks against Lumad (indigenous) teachers.

On the night of July 5-6, 2017, nine Lumad communities in the hinterlands of Lianga, Surigao del Sur, were forced to evacuate after an intensification of Philippine military occupations on their ancestral territories. The occupations began on July 2, 2017 when 60 soldiers in full combat uniform arrived in Lianga. With the memory of the violent 2015 Lianga Massacre still fresh, the Lumads of Lianga evacuated for the second time in less than two years when military bomber planes began circling above their communities around midnight on July 5, 2017.

Martial Law A Threat to Lumad Resistance

President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration of martial law on the island of Mindanao on May 23, 2017 has been widely decried by Philippine national minorities and allied organizations, as it gives blanket protection and immunity for the military to perpetrate human rights violations, including the ongoing attacks on Lumad schools and communities.

Martial Law suspends habeas corpus and empowers the military to supersede civilian authorities in enforcing the law. Under the pretense of fighting terror, Duterte’s government has effectively levied its military power against some of the country’s most vulnerable populations.

Lumad communities have experienced increased militarization since the declaration of Martial Law, but state suppression of Lumad resistance and claims to self-determination through the use of force is nothing new. The Philippine military and its paramilitary counterparts have long targeted Lumads and their leaders because of their active defense against the encroachment on their lands by multinational mining corporations and other destructive industries.

Sign the petition to demand an end to martial law here: http://nafconusa.org/2017/05/notomartiallaw/

Lumad Teachers Under Attack

The Philippine military and their paramilitary forces have historically treated Lumad education as a threat. Under Martial Law, increased attacks on Lumad communities continue to threaten the operation of Lumad schools.

On July 5, 2017, the evacuation affected 633 students and 43 volunteer teachers from six Lumad schools in Lianga, including the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV). When military forces neared Sitio Han-ayan, Diatagon in Lianga on July 5, schools and farms closed in preparation for a possible evacuation.

Photo: ALCADEV

ALCADEV was established in 2004 to fill the void left by inaccessible government schools. The center caters to the specific needs of indigenous youth and their communities. According to former ALCADEV student Glorivic Belandres, “we learned to fight for our rights when others attempt to trample on it. This has become a threat to the military. As soon as we became educated, they found it difficult to deceive us.”

The Philippine military has attempted to destroy Lumad schools through military occupation, redbaiting, and the targeting of Lumad teachers. In the Lianga Massacre of 2015, ALCADEV director and anti-mining activist Emerito Samarca was one of three community leaders murdered by Magahat-Bagani, a paramilitary group created by the Philippine military.

Now, twelve teachers and community leaders of ALCADEV and the Tribal Filipino Program of Surigao del Sur (TRIFPSS) are facing fabricated charges of human trafficking. According to human rights group Karapatan, these charges are used to harass the teachers and other key witnesses to the Lianga Massacre. Annabelle Campos, a TRIFPSS literacy coordinator facing charges, points to their resistance against mining projects as another motivation for the harassment Lumad teachers and community leaders are facing.

In another case of paramilitary harassment, on June 12, 2017 teacher and chairperson of the Association of Community Educators (ACE), Ramel Miguel, was interrogated and threatened by four members of the Alamara paramilitary group in front of 55 school children inside Salugpungan School, a Lumad school in Davao del Norte.

Lumad Students Take Action

Despite the implementation of Martial Law, Lumad students are standing up for their right to indigenous education.

From June 30 to July 10, 2017, Lumad students protested the militarization of their schools and attacks on their teachers by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and its paramilitary groups. Around 200 Lumad students and teachers held a Kampuhan (protest camp) in Davao City to demand that President Duterte end the militarization of Lumad communities in the face of martial law in Mindanao.

Photo: Save Our Schools Network

Lumad students have not been silenced by Martial Law. They will continue to demand that the government protect indigenous peoples’ right to education and self-determination.