Radio station tunes into indigenous land rights

BANGKOK: A community radio station in the Philippines is drawing attention to the struggles of indigenous Lumad people, whose rights to ancestral land and resources are increasingly under threat from industrialisation.

Radyo Lumad, launched last year by the charity Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) and the rights group Kalumbay Regional Lumad Organization, broadcasts eight hours a day, ive days a week.

It offers a mix of news and commentary, as well as traditional music and a helpline for listeners’ queries.

Its 43 community reporters focus on rights violations, including forced evacuations and threats from industrial and mining projects.

“Indigenous people have limited representation and participation in the media,” said Mona Sihombing at the advocacy group Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact.

“Alternative and community media, such as Radyo Lumad, provide a space for our voice to be heard in the ight for our rights,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Lumad in Mindanao island in the southern Philippines are among the nearly 17 million indigenous people who make up about a ifth of the country’s population.

They are among the poorest ethnic groups, and have been caught in a ive-decade old insurgency, as well as a push by logging and mining companies to tap resources including gold, copper and nickel.

Their vulnerability is exacerbated by martial law imposed in Mindanao by President Rodrigo Duterte, who has called the island a “lashpoint for trouble” and atrocities by hardliner and communist rebels.