Indigenous People's Watch

Gov’t Hit for Ignoring UN Call on Human Rights

The Joey Ayala song “Wala nang Tao sa Sta. Filomena” describes a farm village whose rice stalks had bent, where the langay-langayan (Asiatic swallow) sings as it flies by without anyone seeing or hearing it, because the villagers are all gone. The song is a not-so-direct but nevertheless moving depiction of people fleeing their homes and livelihood to save their skins from soldiers.

By Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat.com

The Joey Ayala song “Wala nang Tao sa Sta. Filomena” describes a rural village whose rice stalks had bent, where the langay-langayan (Asiatic swallow) sings as it flies by without anyone seeing or hearing it, because the villagers have all fled somewhere. The song is a not-so-direct but nevertheless moving depiction of the effect of militarization: people fleeing their homes and livelihood to save their skins from military atrocities.

The Sta. Filomena that Ayala describes in the song is in Davao.

Sta. Filomenas

However, if one was a first-time visitor to the Philippines, and happened to attend the recent National Workshop of Indigenous Peoples on Human Rights at the Ateneo de Manila University, held last Feb. 24-27, he or she would think there are many Sta. Filomenas all over the Philippines.

Attended by delegates from Mindanao, Negros Occidental, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, and Cordillera in northern Philippines, the workshop tackled the issue of human rights violations against indigenous peoples.

A representative from Karapatan-Southern Mindanao revealed in the workshop that just last Jan. 10, in Compostela Valley, soldiers of the 33rd Infantry Brigade (IB) strafed a village, killing one lumad (a term for Mindanao’s non-Muslim indigenous peoples). Ten lumad leaders are said to have been harassed by the military in Southern Mindanao this January alone, the human rights alliance Karapatan said.

The Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) from northern Philippines, which was part of the workshop’s coordinating committee, revealed that it recorded 1,297 cases of human rights violations—including arbitrary arrests, harassments, and summary executions of indigenous people and strafing of their villages—in the said region from January 2003 to February 2004. The perpetrators, it said, were from the local units of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Citizens Armed Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU), a paramilitary unit.

UN report

Militarization was one of the human rights issues relating to indigenous peoples tackled in the March 2003 report of Rodolfo Stavenhagen, United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.

Stavenhagen came up with the report after a series of meetings with Philippine government officials and indigenous organizations, as well as UN agencies. He presented it to the 56th special session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland in March 2003.

Other indigenous people’s rights issues discussed in the Stavenhagen report are development aggression (in which “development” projects are foisted on indigenous communities by either the government or private corporations, or both, without their free prior and informed consent); the conflict between national laws and indigenous peoples’ rights as provided for by the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA); the indigenous communities’ lack of access to basic social services and employment opportunities as well as the high incidence of indigenous peoples’ poverty; and the harassment and prosecution, as well as killings, of indigenous peoples’ activists.

Stavenhagen noted that militarization of indigenous communities is closely linked with development aggression, as military operations are directed against indigenous communities protesting the destruction of their livelihood and culture.

He also noted that indigenous people’s rights violations are usually reported by their victims to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) but are not satisfactorily addressed by these agencies.

He recommended expanding the functions of the NCIP (including the training of indigenous legal defenders), the prioritization of indigenous people’s rights in cases of conflict with national laws, government investigation of indigenous peoples’ rights violations, the pull-out of CAFGU units from indigenous communities, the provision of adequate social services for indigenous peoples, and the speedy ratification of International Labor Organization Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Tribal Countries.

Agenda

The delegates to the indigenous peoples’ workshop came up with “An Agenda to Promote and Protect the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples” based on the many cases of indigenous peoples’ rights violations shared by the delegates. The agenda was presented to government representatives in a dialogue at Balay Kalinaw, University of the Philippines, last Feb. 27.

Citing Stavenhagen’s March 2003 report, the agenda states: “We looked at the situation as described in his report and at his recommendations to see whether there have been changes since 2002. We regret that the Philippine government responded negatively and has not done anything, yet, to implement the recommendations... We fully support these recommendations and urge the Philippine government to implement these.”

The agenda notes that: “The situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples has not improved, and in most regions it has even deteriorated further. Militarization and development aggression have worsened in all parts of the country. These are the two main factors which are causing the violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples.”

The agenda highlights the indigenous peoples’ situations in Mindanao and Cordillera and cites specific cases shared in the workshop, including some from the 1980s which have remained unresolved. Bulatlat.com

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