The Question of The Lumads – Philippines

Sister Stella Matutina. Rome, November 2015

It was in 2015 that I first became aware of the Lumad issue.

It was thanks to a meeting organized by the Rome section of Umangat-Migrante, which has always fought in defense of human rights and Filipino workers in the world.

The meeting hosted, in conjunction with the Global Week of Action for the rights of the Lumads of Mindanao, the interventions of Dr. Angie Gonzales of ICHRP - International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, and Sister Stella Matutina, President of the Association of Sisters of Mindanao SAMIN (Sisters' Association of Mindanao), and Secretary-General of the Panalipdan! Mindanao environmental advocacy group.

It was then that the Benedictine nun, who was awarded the Award for Human Rights on 10 December of that year in Weimer (Germany), told what was happening to the indigenous population in the south of the Philippines.

 

In all the Philippines there are about eighteen indigenous groups, called Lumads, but the ongoing persecution is against the Lumads of the southern Philippines, with over forty thousand Lumads removed from their homeland by a strong militarization of those areas; there are more than twenty paramilitary groups in action: the Alamara, the Magahat, the Tribal Warriors, the Bagani Force, the BULIF, and many others, in charge of destroying schools, farms, clinics, in order to remove indigenous communities that do not bend at the will of the multinationals.

The nun also informed us, often with a voice broken by anger and tears, how of the thirty million hectares of land, eight million have been given in concession by the government for the production of palm oil. How Mindanao is now in the hands of foreign multinationals, and how the rice produced there is for exports and not to feed the Filipino population. All this because of the 1995 law, the “Mining Act”, with which the government sold these lands to foreign companies, to make us export plantations or golf fields, and because of which the same multinationals can drive out the populations that reside there from ever.

This is the reason that pushes the Lumads to fight: “They are poor,” said Sister Stella, “they have no doctors, schools, roads, they only have their land with which they live in perfect and ancestral symbiosis, but they have been abandoned by the government, indeed they have been sold.”

The Lumads are a peaceful population, they are not rebels as they continue to be identified (the nun herself has three sentences on her head: illegal detention, human trafficking and kidnapping of children, as well as the accusation of being a rebel), they are forced to defend against a state that instead of sending medicines or building schools sends soldiers to eliminate them. At the time, fifty-eight Lumads were killed during the mandate of President Aquino III, without the killers ever being arrested. And many will also remember the killing of the Italian Father Fausto Tentorio, of the pontifical institute PIME, murdered at the age of fifty-nine in October 2011 in those lands after twenty-two years in the service of the Lumad population, thanks to which twenty-nine schools were built.

Their visit to Rome ended with Dr. Angie Gonzales, two representatives of Umangat-Migrante and me in the offices of the spokesperson of Amnesty International Italy, Riccardo Noury, trying to launch a campaign in defense of Sister Stella Matutina and the Lumads.

 

At the headquarters of Amnesty International Italy with the spokesperson Riccardo Noury. Rome, November 2015

Five years have passed and we have never heard of Lumads again, so it seemed right to me, also on the occasion of Human Rights Day last December 10, to try to understand what happened in this long period of time.

We talk about it with the lawyer Czarina Musni, who has their case close to heart.

 

First of all, thanks Czarina, for your time. Tell us a little about yourself.

Thank you, Stefano, for having me.  This is a good opportunity to expose the present situation of the Lumads of Mindanao under the repressive regime of President Duterte. As you correctly said, I am a lawyer in the Philippines, with a primary focus on human rights advocacy. I am a member of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) and the Union of   Peoples ‘Lawyers in Mindanao (UPLM) – both of which are organizations of human rights lawyers, law students, and paralegals, committed to the defense, protection, and promotion of human rights especially of the poor and the oppressed. As an organization, we provide pro bono legal services to the marginalized sectors of the Filipino society, either collectively or in their individual capacities, in the assertion of their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights.

 

Czarina Musni. Mindanao, 2017

 

As I wrote, I have not heard from Lumad since 2015. What has happened in recent years?

In 2016, when Duterte came into power, the Lumads and Lumad advocates were in high hopes that the issues involving the Lumads, particularly the encroachment of their Ancestral Domains by “development” projects, will be given much attention and resolve to address the issues with as concrete, genuine, and as culturally-relative solutions as possible. Such high hopes stemmed from the past actions and statements of Mr. Duterte when he was still a Mayor of Davao City, which showed his rather sincere affection for the Lumads. So that, it is safe to say that such high hopes were based on realistic grounds.

Martial Law in Mindanao.

However, come 2017, such high hopes eventually waned, especially when the Duterte Administration reared its ugly head against the Lumads when he   and   his   cohorts   decided   to   extend   Martial   Law   to   the   whole of Mindanao for another year. What was initially aimed at   combating the Maute terrorist group which launched several attacks in parts of Southern Mindanao, Duterte’s Martial Law evolved into a counter-insurgency program to address the long-running rebellion of the Communist Party of The Philippines and its armed wing, the New Peoples’ Army (CPP-NPA). This adversely affected the Lumad communities all over Mindanao, who were then labeled as either members or supporters of the NPAs, who were roving around the mountains of Mindanao, which   were – not surprisingly – within the ancestral domains of the Lumads. Thus, any tribe, any leader, any tribal member who asserts for their rights, their land, and their lives, are automatically linked to the rebellion, red-tagged and worse, labeled as a “terrorist.”

And what happens if a tribe, a leader, or any of its members are linked to the rebellion, or red-tagged or labeled as “terrorists”? The whole tribe, the leader, or the member will be subjected to heavy surveillance to the point of limiting their actions, their communications, and their decisions.   And this can take a toll on their collective struggle to assert and to exercise their right to self-determination as indigenous peoples.

Has public opinion in The Philippines improved or worsened in recent years regarding the Lumad issue?

I think this is relative to one’s perspective.  Some see the Lumads as being “manipulated” either by the State or by the CPP-NPA.  To me, the fact that the issues of the Lumads are now being heard and discussed is already an improvement on the public perception of the Lumads when their stories and their struggles were pushed back and ignored for the longest time. Now, I see that the issues of the Lumads and our national minorities are taking up space in public consciousness, and are easing their way to policy influencing and advocacy.  And this is important.

 

Are there other local tribes in The Philippines that are suffering the same harassment as the Lumads?

Yes, the national minorities that hail from Luzon, like the Igorots, and from the Visayas, like the Mangyans, share the same struggles as the Lumads in Mindanao. The same goes out to the Muslim communities in southern Mindanao. These minorities face development aggression insofar as their ancestral domains are concerned at the risk of losing their unique cultural and traditional heritage.

Czarina with Lumads during the “Kahimunan sa Katungod” (Rights Act), a part of the Healing the Hurt Project of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines Northern Mindanao region (RMP-NMR). Mindanao, 2017

Do foreign multinationals in The Philippines continue their looting of your country's land and resources, even now with a much more nationalist presidency?

First of all, I don’t think we have a “nationalist presidency” to speak of. With the complacency of the Duterte administration in the face of China’s invasion of our Philippine waters in the West Philippine Sea, there is nothing nationalistic about his presidency when he cannot even defend the Philippine territory and sovereignty, despite the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 in favor of the Philippines on this particular issue. Going back to your question, the answer is in affirmative.  Multinational corporations continue to loot our country’s lands and resources through mining and logging concessions and corporate plantations and their expansions.

 

Has there been help from abroad all these years?

Yes, and increasingly so. And recently, it has been the help from the international community that we seek, considering the ineptitude of the present Duterte administration. We are thankful to the United Nations for taking the time to look into the worsening human rights situation in the Philippines that involves not only the Lumads but all the sectors of society. We are grateful for the unwavering solidarity of international civil society organizations, and individuals (such as yourself, Stefano) with the   Lumads and the Filipino People in struggle.  In these dark times of Philippine History, we need all support, domestic and international, that we can get.

 

In the beautiful book “Bayi – Stories of Lumad Women”, Bibiyaon Likayan Bigkay, one of the most famous Lumad leaders of Mindanao, aged 92 in 2016, wrote: “We are like a broom, having little power as an individual, but bound together, we can sweep away the many weeds that have been growing around our lands. This is the unity that we have successfully achieved, and have continuously depended on. This is our defiance.”

What do you think about it?

I absolutely agree. Bae Bibyaon is a living legend who has seen the power and the magic of collective action. The Lumads move collectively, and as such, they gain strength in their numbers. This is one of their beautiful characteristics which we can take a lesson or two from.

 

Last, what is your hope for the Lumads and your beautiful country?

My fervent hope for the Lumads is that they'd be given the respect and dignity that any person, any community rightfully deserve, especially so that they are indigenous peoples whose way of life is rooted in nature; we all know how such a life is teeming with wisdom, which is so much needed in today’s society.

Maraming salamat, amping!

(Thank you so much, be careful!)

 

Czarina with Lumads during the “Kahimunan sa Katungod” (Rights Act), a part of the Healing the Hurt Project of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines Northern Mindanao region (RMP-NMR). Mindanao, 2016

“Bayi – Stories of Lumad Women” (Karapatan\Tanggol Bayi, 2016)

Italian version