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Issue Number 25/26, December
2005
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 25/26, December 2005
ISM 2005: SURIGAO
DEL SUR
Josephine O’Connor
Overview
Participants in the
August 2005 International Solidarity Mission (ISM) were
divided into five groups and each was sent to a different
locality within the Philippines, unfortunately on the
basis on that regions record of human rights violations.
Rod Prosser and I joined the mission to Surigao del Sur,
located in the Caraga region of Mindanao.
At present, the Mindanao population can be categorised
into three groups: the Lumad, the Moros, and the Dumagat.
The Lumad is a generic term derived or coined from the
Bisayan language which means “native” of a
certain place. It is applied in reference to the
indigenous peoples who are non-Islamised and still adhere
to their traditional cultural patterns or life style. The
Lumads are sub-categorised into the Manobo speakers and
non-Manobo speaking groups.
The militarisation of indigenous communities and
territories in the course of current
“counter-insurgency” operations has created an
ongoing crisis causing numerous human rights violations
affecting indigenous peoples, who are sometimes caught up
in this fight between Government troops and rebel groups.
Insurgency has affected the lives of the indigenous
Manobos in Mindanao since the military usually conduct
their anti-insurgency operation in the territory of the
Lumads because they are suspected to give sanctuary to
the New People’s Army of the Communist Party of the
Philippines or are NPAs themselves. As a consequence, the
Lumad have been caught in the crossfire and have had to
flee or evacuate to safer places. Because the military
use sophisticated artillery to flush out the NPA, Lumad
settlements are destroyed, including their farms and
domesticated animals. Extensive human rights violations
by the Armed Forces of the Philippines have been reported
in northern Mindanao in connection with a number of
economic development projects (mining, forestry, and
agribusiness) in indigenous areas that affect the
livelihoods of local indigenous communities.
Forests make up 71.2% of the total land area of Caraga
and as a result there are 15 logging companies involved
in the area. Of these, five are currently active: Timber
Licensing Agreements (TLA), Sudecor-Puyat,
Artimco–San Victores, PRI-Bernadino’s and PICOP
Resources Inc.
Importantly, Mindanao is perhaps the country’s
mining capital, with a lot of gold, silver, copper,
nickel, cobalt, limestone, iron and aluminium ore, and
coal reserves. The Supreme Court’s reversal, in late
2004, on the Philippine Mining Act has paved the way for
the Government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA)
to declare that the mining industry is now “open for
business”. Of the 23 priority mining projects for
mining operations, 12 of these are in Mindanao and five
are in Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur.
This year has been especially traumatic for the Manobo of
Surigao del Sur that we were introduced to, as the
military have sought (mostly on behalf of foreign mining
interests) to secure control of the province’s vast
mineral and forestry resources. Up until quite recently
the area had been relatively peaceful, though poverty
stricken. Between early April and late May 2005
atrocities reached proportions unseen since the
1980’s. Prior to this, the area had begun a very
successful programme of alternative development.
The Mission And Its Findings
As the other delegations noted, the human rights abuses
we were exposed to have all been conducted under the
pretext of “counter-insurgency” operations.
However the side-by-side investment activities and
military operations paint a different picture. In the
case of Surigao del Sur, it was suggested to us on our
journey that liberalisation of forestry and mining in the
district has principally been a GMA initiative to pay
back foreign debt. The Armed Forces of the Philippines
have become the main weapon of the GMA Administration,
and their total corruption is overlooked as a
consequence.
The deployment of the military to further open up Surigao
del Sur to overseas mining interests has had devastating
outcomes, specifically in the area of human rights. It is
no coincidence that most human rights violations occur in
places where there are “development projects”
as the military are called in to assist transnational
corporations in their aspirations.
The human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the
Advancement of People’s Rights) documented gross
violations of human rights committed by elements of the
58th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army (IBPA)
under the command of Major James Jacob, 68th IBPA and the
6th Scout Ranger Company against the peasant residents of
Cagwait, San Agustin and Marihatag, Surigao del Sur in
the course of their military operations which started on
April 28, 2005.
On April 28, military troops operated in said
municipalities in search of the New Peoples Army (NPA) as
part of their test mission. Failing to find the NPA, they
turned on the civilian population. April 28 and 29, four
peasants in Cagwait were tortured. With hands tied and
cellophane placed on their heads, they were forced by the
military to declare themselves as members of the NPA and
were threatened to be shot. Another peasant in San Pedro,
Marihatag, was subjected to the same physical and
psychological treatment in a separate incident on April
29. On May 4, three youth in San Agustin were kidnapped,
tortured and forced as guides for the military operations
for four days. Another four farmers, relatives of the
first three who were kidnapped, were detained last May 7
and are still in the hands of said military unit and used
as guides for military operations.
Bombs were dropped in the hinterlands of Andap Valley in
Marihatag and Magkahunao and Yadawan in San Agustin from
May 6 until May 9. preventing farmers from going to their
farmlands and destroying their crops. More than 200
families and more than 2,000 individuals from Andap in
Marihatag; Magkahunaw, Lagangan and Yadawan in San
Agustin were displaced.
Local Concerns
It was stressed to us on our mission that the people of
Caraga were not against mining and logging per se, just
under the current circumstances. What they favoured
instead was industrialisation by, of and for the people.
Notably, Mindanao receives less than 12% of Government
funding despite it contributing up to 50% of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). As a result, all provinces within
Mindanao have extremely low ratings on the Human
Development Index. People we spoke to said this
demonstrated a deliberate effort on the part of the
national Government to perpetuate and reinforce Mindanao
as an under-developed, pre-industrial producing region.
This has led the Lumad to denounce GMA as
“anti-people, pro-foreign interest”.
In relation to the 1987 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act,
activists on the ground pointed to the obvious failing of
this law in that the legal title of ancestral domain is
now held by individuals, instead of the community. So,
despite protection apparently being in place to encourage
economic self-determination1 of the indigenous
communities of Mindanao, the tensions have been
heightened as the law privileges divisive private
property.
Concluding Comments
On September 23, Mary Ellen, Rod and I spoke to Jeff
Langley, the Deputy Director of the South East Asian
Division of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Trade, in Wellington. We arranged this meeting to
voice our concerns surrounding the Philippine Army’s
blatant use of force against its own people and to
question the diplomatic, trade, defence and aid
relationships New Zealand holds with the Philippine
government. Personally, I find this area worrying and
I’ll attempt to look into it further. Officially,
“The goal of New Zealand’s aid programme in the
Philippines is to contribute to the efforts of the
Government of Philippines and its people to achieve
poverty elimination through equitable and sustainable
social and economic development”2.
As delegates on the ISM, we were urged to investigate the
ties our respective governments hold with GMA’s
Administration, and attempt to draw to their attention
the grave human rights abuses occurring under her reign
of terror. This would seem to me a vital matter. If New
Zealand is covertly acting as an accomplice to the
tyranny of the transnationals currently operating in
Mindanao, I would be horrified. The similarities that
exist between Aotearoa and Mindanao in relation to
foreign economic aggression need to be kept at the
forefront of our minds. As the saying goes, our
resistance is as global as their capital and the August
2005 ISM was as good a demonstration as any of the truth
in that.
1 The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act
In the enforcement of the 1987 Constitution, the IPRA law
mandates that the State should create a policy to
“recognize and promote the rights of indigenous
peoples within the framework of national unity and
development” (Philippine Constitution, Sec. 22, Act
II) and to “protect the rights of indigenous
cultural communities to their ancestral lands to ensure
their economic, social and cultural well-being
(Philippine Constitution, 1987, Sec. 5, Act XIII and Sec.
17, Act XIV).
2 New Zealand Statement – Consultative Group Meeting
for the Philippines, Cebu, 7-8 November 2003. From NZAID
Fact Sheet on the Philippines.
Josephine O’Connor, of Wellington, studies
International Relations at Victoria University. She had
previously visited the Philippines in 1996.
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