Police flayed for raid on ‘lumad’ children

MANILA: The Philippine National Police (PNP) again came under heavy fire over a raid by heavily armed lawmen to rescue 19 children of “lumads” (indigenous peoples) allegedly being indoctrinated on communist ideology inside the campus of a Catholic university in Cebu City in the Visayas.

Leo Villarino, the chief investigator of the Commission on Human Rights ( CHR) regional office in the Visayas, belied the PNP allegations as he revealed that based on the report, a government social worker assigned to the children “categorically stated that the children were never indoctrinated.”

Villarino added even the parents who originally sought the help of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in geting reunited with their children, said they never expressed concern that they were being recruited by communist rebels.

A video of the alleged rescue on Monday that went viral on social media showed the children, their teachers and lumad leaders screaming and crying while being forcibly taken away by heavily armed policemen from the retreat house of the Catholic-run University of San Carlos in Cebu City.

Leaders of the Manobo tribe said the children were brought to Cebu by concerned teachers ater they were displaced by mining issues, a major problem being encoutered by lumads in in their ancestral lands in Davao del Norte province in Mindanao.

Deputy Speaker Mikee Romero of the partylist iPacman group and a staunch ally of President Duterte, joined other members of the House of Representatives in calling for an investigation by the chamber’s Commitee on Human Rights on the alleged rescue.

Romero said he does not believe the police version that went viral on social media. “On the contrary, there was much screaming, cries for help, commotion and struggle,” he said.

Romero also offered $10,000 as legal fund to defend the lumad leaders and teachers arrested and charged by the police for kidnapping, child abuse and human trafficking, He also showed a copy of the curriculum for the children which indicated there was no single subject that taught “inculcation of any ideology.”