No day is holy for the state agents when in the silence of the morning dawn on 30 December 2020, while the whole nation is celebrating the coming of Jesus Christ, they barged into the homes of the Tumandok leaders servicing search warrants for illegal possession of firearms, ammunitions and explosives, and killed nine (9) environmental defenders and arrested seventeen (17) other leaders who they claimed as members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).
We strongly condemn this irreverent and vicious act of killing by the police and the military of the Western Visayas region. This is but a result of the red-tagging policy of this blind and cold-blooded government which is aimed at dissenters. It fails to see acts of opposition and criticism of government actions and/or inactions as expressions of citizen’s democratic rights. It always wants to solve societal problems using state armed forces.
Should we cower in silence in the face of this impunity? Should we just put the lives of the Tumandok leaders and those others killed by this government to waste?
The Tumandok is an alliance of indigenous peoples’ communities in Capiz and in Iloilo which strongly opposes the construction of a billion-peso government project, Jalaur Mega Dam, that would greatly impact not only the Jalaur River and the environment but also the ancestral domains and the socio-economic activities of the Tumanduk community. Their strong resistance against the development project has led its members the subject of red-tagging by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and harassment through intensified military presence in their communities.
For many years, indigenous peoples who are at the forefront of the struggle to protect their land and the environment are being harassed and killed. The Global Witness “annual report into the killings of land and environmental defenders in 2019 shows the highest number yet have been murdered in a single year. 212 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019 – an average of more than four people a week. Time after time, they have challenged those companies operating recklessly, rampaging unhampered through forests, skies, wetlands, oceans and biodiversity hotspots.”
The state agent’s claim of regularity of their operation under the guise of Synchronized Enhanced Management of Police Operations (SEMPO) needs to be scoffed-at. The modus of planting evidence and claiming the unarmed victims fought back are like a broken record being played to justify their cowardly actions. Repeatedly, this alibi has been used to silence the victims of injustices.
We ask the government to recognize that war and violence is not a solution to a social malaise we now face and that dialogue and listening to what its constituents’ feel, think and desire should be the primary response to any problem.
We thus, ask the government to change heart and heed to the cry of your people.
We ask all the district representatives in Congress of Panay Island to protect their constituency, if the national government cannot do so. Do not separate yourselves from your people. We demand that as our representatives to truly represent us. We ask you to lead a clamor for a congressional investigation over this matter
And even as we urge the local governments to take action, we ask the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), Department of Justice (DOJ), the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) , and the whole body of Congress to initiate an impartial investigation to the injustice done to the Tumandoks tribes, and to all others related red-tagging killings and arrests.
The Government exists to serve its citizens. Do not treat them lesser than you are, worse as your enemies. History is witness. When the time is right, the people’s will to achieve good will triumph.
Partnership Mission for People’s Initiatives (PMPI) is formerly the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc., a social development and advocacy network of 250 members from faith-based groups, non-government organizations and people’s organizations grouped into 15 regional clusters all over the Philippines.
