HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Kalinga Tribal Leader and Activist Laid to Rest

Rafael Markus Bangit – Makoy to everyone including his tribemates and village mates –has finally been laid to rest in his village in serene Tomiangan, Upper Tabuk in Kalinga province. Despite military and police avowals that there is no “hit list” of activists, several other activists in the Cordillera region are sensing danger in their midst.

BY ACE ALEGRE
Bulatlat

Forty-seven-year old Rafael Markus Bangit – Makoy to everyone including his tribemates and village mates – has finally been laid to rest in his village in serene Tomiangan, upper Tabuk in Kalinga province.

Born on Oct. 24, 1959 to the Malbong tribe of Tabuk, Makoy led an unusual, perhaps beyond the ordinary life. For more than three decades, Markus devoted his time, energy and skills to the Cordillera movement for self-determination, said the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), perhaps the largest aggrupation of tribal and indigenous peoples’ organizations in the highland region.

The CPA takes its roots from the Kalinga Bontoc Peace Pact Holders Association led by revered tribal leader and hero Macli-ing Dulag in the 1970s. It had been the fiercest tribal and IP group in the Cordillera region fighting large dams and commercial mining, which destroy the environment and tribal communities.

Starting as a very young activist in the mid-1970s, when his village was under threat of being submerged in one of the four megadams of the Chico River Basin Hydroelectric Project of the Marcos dictatorship, Makoy joined militants opposing the dam project.

He actively participated in activities that would defend the territories of indigenous peoples including his tribe’s land whenever he was home in Tomiangan. He was an avid leader of Kalinga college students in Baguio.

From 1995 to 1998, Makoy served as chairperson of CPA-Kalinga. He became secretary-general of Bayan Muna (people first) Kalinga chapter  in 2001 and was its vice chairperson at the time he was killed.

Pangat, local government leader, activist, “big brother”

Makoy, despite his young age was a respected leader in his community.  From 1994 to 2000, he became active in local government, first as the secretary and then as councilman of Brgy. Dupag, which has administrative jurisdiction over Tomiangan.

Just around 40 then, he was nevertheless very much respected by the elders of his tribe. This respect grew as Makoy showed unmatched skill in settling inter-tribal disputes while enriching his knowledge of the bodong (peace pact) system. Makoy was a pangat (peace pact holder) himself.

Makoy was traveling to Baguio with his son Banna on the fatal night of June 8 when gunned down by armed men in Echague town, Isabela.  He was the coordinator of the Elders Desk of the CPA and also of the CPA affiliate Bodong Pongors Association (BPO), a federation of Cordillera tribal elders.

Kankanaey tribe member Wyndle Bolinget, CPA secretary-general, says Makoy was one of the senior members of the CPA regional secretariat in Baguio and had been a “big brother” to him and the younger CPA secretariat members.

Since August 2004, Makoy had been traveling to Baguio to the CPA regional offices from his family in Tabuk.

Send-off for Makoy

There was a huge march-demonstration from Tabuk town proper to his village in Tomiangan before he was buried June 14.

He was sent off by his family – his wife Ausutina and their four children (the eldest is 15 years old while the youngest is 5 years old), as well as other people whose life were touched by him and his tribe.

Bolinget said that with the death of Makoy, the Cordillera movement for self-determination has lost one of its most highly-committed and valuable leaders. “It is a political crime and a crime against humanity,” the young Kankanaey tribesman said.

”While most of us remain under heavy surveillance and in imminent danger of assassination by what he claimed as government-sponsored but still unacknowledged death squads, it (the killing of Bangit) is another barbaric act that perpetuates government in power through the might of the gunbarrel,” Bolinget added.

Cordillera activists watched

Meanwhile, despite avowals of the military and police that there is no “hit list” among activists in the country, several other activists here are sensing danger in their midst.

While Makoy reportedly told his colleagues of someone tailing him in Tabuk before he traveled to Baguio on June 8, a leader of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP or Philippine Peasant Movement) local chapter in the mining town of Itogon, Benguet is also fearing for his life.

This after Jose Doton, chairperson of the local anti-dam alliance TIMMAWA (Tignay dagiti Mannalon a Mangwayawaya iti Agno or Peasant Movement to Free the Agno) was killed on May 16, two kilometers from his home in San Nicolas town, Pangasinan.

Virgilio Aniceto of Itogon, Benguet is Doton’s vice chairperson. He is also a pastor of  the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).

In recent weeks, Aniceto has been reportedly tailed by three men, one boarding the jeepney with him everytime he heads home, and two following the jeepney on a motorcycle.

In Aniceto’s home barrio, Ucab, at least two other men have been asking residents about the pastor’s movements, as if trying to establish his routine. But there is no real pattern to Aniceto’s movements, and his neighbors have, anyway, refused to answer all questions.

On May 10, two of the three men said to be tailing him reportedly accosted and tried to forcibly restrain a seven-year old girl in Ucab Proper to ask her about Aniceto and her father.But the child reportedly bit the hand that was tightly gripping her forearm, broke free, and ran to report the incident to her elders.

She said the men had shown her a picture of her father and “Uncle Vergel” (Aniceto) and that the word “WANTED” had been written under the picture, in marker ink.  It was reportedly the third time the men had accosted and unsuccessfully tried to question her on Aniceto and her  father.

The little girl is the daughter of Eduard Fernando Mangili, Secretary-General of APIT TAKO (Alyansa dagiti Pesante iti Taéng Kordilyera or Alliance of Peasants in the Cordillera Homeland), a regional chapter of the KMP. He is also the first vice chairperson of the CPA.

Mangili’s name, along with that of the farmers’ group chair Julian Gayomba, allegedly appeared on a death squad hit list that the CPA got hold of in February and exposed to the public, said Bolinget.

Since then, “suspicious-looking characters” have reportedly been seen prowling around Ucab Proper, a tightly-knit mining neighborhood where almost all the residents are akin either by consanguinity or affinity, and thus a place where strangers and strange doings easily stand out.

Also several months ago, the CPA offices had been put under 24-hour surveillance, Bolinget said. This, though the matter has been investigated by the Baguio police upon the directive of Philippine National Police chief Dir. Gen. Arturo Lomibao, who was prompted by international pressure from international groups to issue the order.

Lulu A. Gimenez, secretariat coordinator for information and education of the KMP-affiliate APIT TAKO disclosed that Julian Gayomba, 64-year-old chairperson of the said farmers group, has been living away from his wife and children for the past four months. He has taken refuge in the village of his ancestors. A vegetable farmer in Guinaoang, Mankayan, Benguet, his wife’s home village, Julian is now trying to earn a living as a small-scale gold miner in Alab, Bontoc town in Mountain Province, the village of his parents’ origin.

But at a sari-sari store on the Bontoc road, across the bridge from Alab, “sinister-looking men” have reportedly been showing up and asking customers and passersby if they know whether Lakay Julian is in the village. The men come in a van and a motorbike that bear no license plates, Gimenez said.

They stay to stare at the bridge and the village for hours at a time.  They are armed and wear Kevlar vests, said Gimenez. “They have not attempted to enter Alab Proper, where Julian has been living,” she said. “Perhaps they are wary of what the people of Alab can do to them.”

Alab is among the Chico River valley communities that gained a reputation for tribal militancy during the time of the Marcos dictatorship.  It actively participated in the anti Chico Dam battles.

Gayomba left Guinaoang for Alab on Feb. 12, this year upon receiving word that he was among those named in a supposed hit list which the CPA had gotten hold of, and that sinister-looking men had been asking about him at the places he frequented, such as the market in Abatan, Buguias and the Vegetable Trading Post in La Trinidad, both in Benguet.

Throughout the week of Julian’s departure, strangers kept turning up in Guinaoang, searching for him, Gimenez said.  Strangers raked through the area on motorbikes, she added.

In March, strangers reportedly combed Guinaoang on foot, asking barrio folk if they had seen Julian and showing them a photo of him.  “This man in the picture is a member of the New People’s Army (NPA),” they would say to some of the people; to others, “This man feeds the NPA.”

Then in April, the always kevlar-vested armed men made their first appearance in front of the bridge to Alab.  In May, they started their bridge-and-village watch. They are still at it.

Gayomba like Makoy, Aniceto and Mangili had been active leaders of various non-traditional organizations in their communities and at the regional level.  Gayomba heads the MACQUITACDEG, the alliance of communities who have opposed the continued operation of Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company, that they claim had been raving the precious lands and resources. Bulatlat

© 2006 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

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