The Panalipdan Mindanao, which has been compiling list of leaders who were killed in the course of their environmental advocacy, said the President’s order, that is similar to the assurance of then-President Gloria Arroyo in 2009 to mining companies, “shows nothing has changed from the past Arroyo administration with regards to the government’s position on mining and the deployment of military for its protection,”
“[Mr.] Aquino is further entrenching the dirty system of private armies,” said Sr. Stella Matutina, OSB, secretary-general of the Panalipdan Mindanao, who warned that “recruiting and arming civilians to protect private interests had left a trail of blood across Mindanao.”
These paramilitary units “will lead to more human-rights violations, the killing of indigenous peoples and environmental activists and the displacement of tens of thousands in mining communities all over the country,” Matutina said.
It said an allied organization, the Kalikasan Peoples Network for the Environment, “has documented 31 killings of anti-mining activists in the past decade, five of these killings occurred under the Aquino presidency.”
“Thousands of other families in Surigao and Agusan provinces and Compostela Valley have been displaced due to the pursuit of mining interests in their communities. In Zamboanga Peninsula members of the Special Civilian Armed Auxiliary (SCAA) have brought a reign of terror to Subanen communities for years, even prompting a congressional inquiry into the human-rights violations they committed,” Panalipdan said in a statement.
The group also said in San Fernando, Bukidnon, “the paramilitary group Triom Force is responsible for the killing of four people, the latest just this month. In Agusan del Norte and Agusan del Sur, Lumad paramilitary groups have terrorized Manobo, Higaonon and Banwaon communities that oppose the mining and logging concessions in the area.”
“These investments are pursued with the use of force against the will of the people. So much so that indigenous peoples and farmers have labeled the Mining Development Areas or MDAs, as ‘Military Deployment Areas,” it said.
Party-list Rep. Luz Ilagan of Gabriela earlier said “seven environmental activists have been killed under the Aquino administration, including world-renowned botanist Leonard Co and Palawan broadcaster and anti-mining activist Gerry Ortega.”
“Recently, environmental activists from the Visayas—Vince Cinches, Maria Geobelyn Lopez and Hope Hervill—were harassed by military agents,” she said, warning that this latest move of the President could be a premonition of more human-rights violations.
“Displacement, harassment and killings all for the destruction of ancestral lands. This has been the experience of many Lumad communities in Mindanao and even in other regions when indigenous groups oppose the operations of big mining companies all over the country,” she said.
