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Deep Into Banwaon Lands:
The Corporate-Military Connection

Nuns from the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS) have appealed to President Arroyo, Congress and other agencies to pull out government soldiers and paramilitary men from Lumad villages in San Luis, Agusan del Sur in southern Philippines. Upland communities including religious centers and livelihood projects are reportedly subjected to military surveillance and harassment. Military operations have intensified since Environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez approved big corporate tree plantation projects that encroach into Lumadland, it was observed.

BY JOWEL F. CANUDAY
MindaNews

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SAN LUIS, Agusan del Sur -- Months before the New People's Army (NPA) attacked police and paramilitary targets here, the military had been scouring the hinterlands for rebels, according to a chronology of military operations prepared by the Tagdumahan, an alliance of Banwaon community organizations.

In a four-page document, "Military Operations: Subling Pagbanhig sa Teritoryong Banwaon (New Attacks in the Banwaon Territory)," the Tagdumahan noted that the Army's Task Force Diamond deployed some 900 soldiers to comb the forests of Barangays Balit, Policarpio, Sta. Rita and Mahagsay here from April 26 to May 7 this year.

On July 9, at 3 a.m. residents saw soldiers from the 36th IB and 30th IB of the 402nd Infantry Brigade armed with howitzers and escorted by armored personnel carriers, massing up in Barangay Policarpio to replace troops from Task Force Diamond, the Tagdumahan said.

The next day, soldiers sealed off an old logging road referred to by the loggers and Banwaon residents as "Side One." The road runs parallel to the Maasam river, cutting through the heart of the Banwaon territory.

Days later, soldiers scoured more areas in the forests, deeper into the Banwaon communities of Kinambukagyang, Kilometer 30, Tabon-tabon and several other areas, the report noted.

"Striking," was how Augustus Gatmaytan, Tagdumahan legal counsel, described the timing of the military operations with the approval by Environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez of five new Industrial Forest Plantation Management Agreement (IFMA) contracts.

Alvarez awarded the IFMA contracts covering some 110,000 hectares of forestlands straddling San Luis, Esperanza and Loreto towns in this province to Tecland, Inc.; Goldenbell Hills, Inc.; Caraga Forest, Inc.; Transland, Inc.; and Shannalyne, Inc. (the ownership of these Singaporean-Filipino partnerships is the subject of an ongoing controversy).

Ruel Badbaran, Tagdumahan executive secretary, said the IFMA contracts of Goldenbell Hills and Tecland, Inc. covered the areas near the Maasam and Candiisan rivers where opposition to the tree plantation projects is strong. Badbaran said it was also in these areas where military presence was heavy. A 10-page fact-finding report by representatives from the Butuan diocese, United Church of Christ of the Philippines, Lumad service institutions, Karapatan and other human rights groups, said the soldiers occupied and established checkpoints along Kilometers 11, 19, 22, 27, 28, 29 and 30 of "Side One." The May 7 report of the fact-finding team noted that residents in these areas were against the IFMA projects.

The report was reaffirmed by a second fact-finding mission initiated by another group of religious, Lumad service institutions and human rights groups on July 30 to 31. The July fact-finding report concluded that the combat operations were actually part of military "maneuvers for clearing the area of opposition, paving the way for the entry of these new tree plantations."

The report noted that communities strongly opposed to the IFMA and other resource-extractive projects like mining and large-scale commercial logging operations were the target of the military operations.

"The leaders and members of the Tagdumahan perceive the military operations merely as means by which the interests behind these plantations may silence their opposition by disturbing and confusing their member-communities," the report read.

The IFMA was introduced by the DENR in 1991 as a key component of its Industrial Forest Plantation (IFP) scheme with the issuance of DENR Administrative Order No. 42. The IFMA was designed as an integrative approach to forestry, replacing the controversial and forest-extractive Timber License Agreement (TLA) system.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) infused $25 million for the initial phase of the program which guaranteed access and control of up to 20,000 hectares of forest lands for conversion into tree plantations.

In 1993, DENR issued Department Administrative Order 60, increasing the benefits and incentives to IFMA contract holders, including access to a total of 40,000 hectares of forest lands, tax benefits, control of all licenses and permits within the plantation site.

In 1999, DAO 53-99 effectively removed limits of the IFMA hectarage. The Banwaons had opposed the IFMA program since it was first introduced by the DENR on the grounds that it threatened their way of life.

Datu Luay-luay said many of the Lumad communities who accepted the IFMA project found themselves uprooted from their ancestral lands as tree plantations cleared away their farms, destroyed their hunting grounds, disturbed their burial grounds and deprived them of medicinal trees and herbs. "The forest is our life. If it is altered, so are our lives as a people," the datu said.

In 1993, the Banwaons sent a three-page petition to the ADB, asking the bank to scrap a loan application of the Provident Tree Farms, Inc. (PTFI) for its IFMA contract No. 1 covering portions of their territory here. Gatmaytan, who assisted the Lumads in drafting the petition, also facilitated the transmittal of the petition to the ADB's office in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila.

But the PTFI and two other firms, the Casilayan Softwood Development, Inc. and Woodland Domains, Inc., succeeded in acquiring their loans and were able to establish tree plantations in portions of Banwaon lands in San Luis. The Banwaons, however, succeeded in barring the firm's entry, particularly in areas straddling the Maasam, Candiisan and Adgawan rivers which run deep into the heart of Banwaon territory.

Last year, the Banwaons, Manobo and Higaonon Lumads under the Tagdumahan initiated one of the biggest anti-IFMA rallies the town of San Luis had ever seen, Gatmaytan said. He said about 5,000 members of various tribes came down from the mountains to gather at the plaza to express their opposition to the IFMA projects.

Col. Francisco Simbajon, 402IB spokesperson, denied alleged links between military operations and the tree plantations' entry to Banwaon Lands. "I think that is not the exact idea. We do not secure any company or whatever private company," he said. He said the military operations "were always based on intelligence reports" on the presence of armed groups, especially the NPA.

Simbajon, however, stressed in a dialogue with residents on November 24 that it is also the duty of the military to "clear" the area of "problems" to allow the smooth entry of development projects. "The land of San Luis is vast but this is not maximized and used for the future of the Lumads and the future of the country," he said.

The July 30 to 31 fact-finding report said one of the camps of the Army in the area is located right inside the compound of PTFI here. The PTFI has an IFMA covering some 20,770 hectares here and in the adjacent town of La Paz, and another 11,500 hectares in Barangay Zillovia, Talacogon since 1991. The report also claimed that PTFI provided support to the military in terms of equipment, primarily trucks, to the soldiers when it conducted its operations in the area in May.

Participants of the mission appealed to the government to probe the links between tree plantations and other corporate projects, and the officers and members of the military.

Sr. Mary John Dumaug, who has been working and living with the Banwaons since 1978, said it was not the first time military operations preceded large-scale logging and tree plantation projects in the area.

She said from 1986 to 1996, when corporations applied for logging, tree plantation and mining contracts here with the DENR, the Army launched annual military operations in Banwaon territories. Dumaug said years before the military noted NPA presence in the area, government forces and the defunct paramilitary group, Integrated Civilian Home Defense Force (ICHDF), had made inroads into Banwaon territories, closely guarding logging equipment and operations and hunting down Banwaon Lumads who refused to join the paramilitary group.

In the mid-1980s, Dumaug said the military and para-military forces stepped up their operations in the area against the NPA. She said Banwaon lands had become so battered by combat operations that many Banwaons, including children, have their own war stories to share.

Bing, 30, whose family resides along the banks of the Maasam River, spent her childhood fleeing with her parents from the ICHDF. She said the ICHDF suspected their parents and relatives as anti-government because they refused to submit themselves for ICHDF training in the adjacent town of Esperanza. Bing now has two sons, aged seven and five. Like her, they flee every time military operations are conducted in the area.

Sr. Dumaug said it is difficult to count how many Banwaon Lumads have experienced abuses or have been killed by the ICHDF and the military due to lack of documentation. When the DENR replaced its logging program with the IFMA in the early 1990s, military operations were conducted almost yearly up to 1996, forcing majority of the Banwaons to flee their farmlands and endure hunger, disease and death in the evacuation centers or deeper into the forests, she said.

Despite these difficulties, however, the Banwaons have remained firm in their resistance to the projects, she said.

(Editor�s note: MindaNews is a Davao city-based news agency owned and operated by journalists based in Mindanao. It can be reached through mindanao@mindanews.com.)

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