A human rights group assailed the possible promotion of a ranking police officer that spearheaded an operation that led to the killing of nine indigenous peoples in Panay back in 2020.
If put together as bits and parts of a large puzzle, all the repressions, oppressions, marginalizations and directed violations of Tumandok rights as indigenous people the picture amount to ethnocide. There exists a deliberate and systematic destruction of their life and culture as vulnerable people.
Contrary to military claims that they were members of militia of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the slain indigenous peoples in Panay had long been asserting their right to land and life in the face of so-called development projects. In return, they had been tagged as enemies of the state and subjected to intense militarization over the years.
Indigenous peoples organizations and support networks organize a candle lighting activity and noise barrage in Quezon City to call for justice for the murdered Tumandok leaders in Panay.
The 16 Tumandok leaders arrested were staunch defenders of their ancestral domain.
“I asked why they killed him, and they denied it. But I saw it with my own two eyes, they shot my husband.”
Nobody owns the sweet river waters
its flows can’t be damned nor sold
nobody steals our fiery cauldron:
boils legal conceits grammar wrong.
“The Jalaur Dam is one of the pet projects, if not milking cows, of Senate President Franklin Drilon, one of Aquino’s leading allies.” – Environmental Network against Pork Barrel and Corruption
“Typhoon Yolanda destroyed our houses and our trees in November 8 last year… Now, more than two months after, the 61st IB-PA and the NCIP suddenly remembered to conduct a relief distribution operation, come here in the middle of our assembly preparations and in full battle gear?”