Indigenous people from Mindanao march in Manila to call the attention of the government on attacks in their communities. (Photo by Joe Torres)
On the eve of the 30th anniversary of a dictator's ouster, a pre-dawn attack on a sanctuary for displaced indigenous peoples in Mindanao highlights the Philippine's continuing struggle against impunity.
Unidentified men splashed gasoline and threw a burning stick on the roof of a Davao City shelter for conflict refugees from Talaingod, a mountain town that has long fought encroachment by logging, mining and plantation interests.
As an ambulance raced five children to a hospital, a second blaze destroyed a nearby dormitory for the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, host to hundreds of refugees since early 2015.
The attack occurred as the country's capital commemorated the first days of the People Power revolt that forced out President Ferdinand Marcos on Feb. 25, 1986.
It was a reminder that human rights abuses remain endemic in rural Philippines, where most impoverished Filipinos live and injustices continue to feed Asia's longest running communist insurgency.
Soldiers and paramilitary forces have killed more than 70 lumad, the tribal people of Mindanao, dozens of them children, under the government of President Benigno Aquino, son of former president Corazon Aquino who succeeded Marcos after the 1986 peaceful revolt.
Tortureallegations
Thirty years later, Mrs. Aquino's son stands accused of unleashing the same forces that killed thousands of dissenters, and jailed and tortured tens of thousands of other Filipinos during the Marcos regime.
Aquino has failed to deliver on his promise to respect civil liberties, according to the global Human Rights Watch. The group said soldiers and militia allegedly killed more than a dozen tribal leaders and community members in the first eight months of 2015.
Seven more lumad were slain this year, including a 15-year-old grade school pupil.
As in the Marcos years, the Aquino government equates lumad defense of ancestral lands as support for the communist New People's Army.
The state's offensive to "save" the lumad has exacted the highest toll on children: 30 have been slain over the last six years.
Nine of 10 lumad children are deprived of access to state education. Yet in the last two years, soldiers and militia have taken over or razed dozens of small schools partly funded by church groups.
The government says lumad schools encourage opposition to government development policies.
In another province, troops taunted lumad students of an award-winning school with threats of attacks. Hours later, the same troops stood on a knoll, unmoving as paramilitary forces killed a head teacher and two local indigenous leaders in front of children.
Aquino insists there is no campaign against indigenous peoples. But he approved a program that allows mining firms to fund the militia. His military hosts paramilitary leaders accused of murders in their main Manila headquarters.
Generals and colonels have even appeared before Congress with militia leaders who espouse their right to kill civilians teaching "foreign ideas."
More than 20 cases have been filed against soldiers and paramilitary leaders for Lumad killings but there have been few arrests, usually followed with the grant of bail.
Internationalinterest
Rights groups, U.N. agencies, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila have urged a pullout of military and militia troops to allow some 7,000 displaced lumad across Mindanao to return home.
Aquino, who has pledged to break the insurgency's backbone before the end of his term, has refused all entreaties.
He also snubbed a delegation of lumad led by a 90-year old woman chieftain who can trace the arc of impunity from the Marcos years to this day.
Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay played a key role in the resistance against loggers' militia in the 70s and 80s. A warrior famed for her skill with the indigenous bow, she still recalls how peaceful protests led to the deaths of a brother and friends, prompting the lumad's armed defense until the last of the loggers fled during the rule of Aquino's mother.
Bai Bigkay, who stays in the camp that came under fire, says her people again face the specter of "state terrorism" even in sanctuaries far from their mountain homes.
A lawmaker with a posse of cops and militia raided their Davao camp last year, claiming lumad were "human trafficking victims." The state human rights body and the U.N. Special Rapporteur for internally displaced persons debunked the rescue claim, noting indigenous folk were fleeing abuses, including forcible recruitment into the paramilitary.
Instead of heeding their findings, Aquino's government filed raps against clerics, activists and lawmakers supporting the lumad.
Thirty years, plenty of self-praise for a vibrant democracy — yet the son of the woman who brought down Marcos continues to wield the tyrant's whip.
Inday Espina-Varona is an editor and commentator based in Manila.
