Manilakbayan: Lumads as heroes

IF armed men would suddenly enter Manila’s enclaves of the rich or middle-class residential condominiums, kill the village leaders, and force residents to flee to the nearest barangay hall – well, it isn’t hard to imagine that there would be much lamentation and outrage.

Especially if the thugs do it in conspiracy with inept government officials – and business interests that lust after the lucrative real estate where those residences are located.

The conspirators and goons would then have to face the full force of the law and be made an example so that others would not dare do the same.

Unfortunately, Mindanao’s Lumads live far away from the reach of TV networks and even mobile data signals. Never mind how rich their lands may be (they really are!) that foreign mining companies and foreign plantation firms do “everything” to reach and control the Lumad’s ancestral domain – they are just too far away and also too different. Yes, they do “everything.”

“Everything” means swamping government with applications to mine the Lumads’ ancestral domain from north to south of Mindanao, or to establish plantations for pineapple, banana, and palm oil on other fertile Lumad and peasant lands. “Everything” means working hand in hand with the military to form and finance paramilitary groups, as one of the greatest mining tycoons once proudly admitted. “Everything” means the same foreign mining companies and foreign plantation firms give the nation a shrug or the silent treatment as “recalcitrant” Lumads face murders, massacres, abductions, and forced evacuations.

Along the way, scores have died among Lumads and their advocates, Lumad schools shut down, and entire communities forcibly uprooted to give way to the mines, plantations, and their concept of “development.”

The Lumads would want nothing to do with us as well really. Like the Muslims in the south, Mindanao’s Lumads and other indigenous people elsewhere resisted colonial domination – enabling them to preserve their ways of life, culture, language, and sense of history. “Backward” their existence some may falsely think, it is an existence formally recognized by the Constitution that assures them their right to self- determination and autonomy, especially since we supposedly don’t want them to secede from the “diverse, multifaith, pluralistic vision” of the Republic of the Philippines.

The Lumads are not begging for attention and mercy. They know how to fight and they know their rights.

The Lumads have reached Manila and will be staying in the national capital as part of yet another Manilakbayan (People’s March to Manila) to draw attention to their plight, the absence of the rule of law, the immoral misuse of the law against them, and the absence of a sense of justice over the unrelenting shedding of Lumad blood in Mindanao’s portion of Daang Matuwid.

The government has a solemn obligation to “do justice to every man” — to each Lumad — to protect their fundamental right to life, and to see to it their full inclusion in the life of the nation as a supposedly integral and inseparable part of the Filipino people. The police and army have the duty to protect them -- not to massacre and evict them from their ancestral domain. The justice system has the responsibility to prosecute the beasts who attack them. The society has the duty to stand with and for them, for if these crimes can be perpetrated against Lumads with impunity, we deny ourselves the full promise of freedom for all and the preservation of essential parts of Filipino nationhood — our first peoples.

This is not about Lumads being used by Reds to foment hatred against government and the Republic. The Reds are with us in standing with and for the Lumads, against foreign mining and foreign plantations wrecking Mindanao, and against the devastating type of “development” pursued by foreign miners and foreign plantation owners. A cursory look at the mounting body of evidence – survivor accounts and witness affidavits – and the overlapping maps of military and paramilitary presence, of foreign mining and plantation sites, and Lumad ancestral domain all point to who are really behind the violence and who have to bear the responsibility.

Through their Manilakbayan, Lumads are again laying claim to the honored title of “heroes” for their sacrifices at protecting their lives and land. They have long been heroes as our gutsy, proud, brave, and dignified first peoples who resisted Spain and the United States. Now, the circumstances have painfully changed: it is no longer colonial powers that are trying to crush them and capture their rich land but the very Republic they are supposedly a part of and whose Constitution guarantees their full rights.

Welcome the Manilakbayanis and stand with Lumads. Their fight is our fight: We are less free as a nation if Lumads are not free. We all benefit if Lumads get recognition, protection, and justice.

Think about it: If the same madness happening to Lumads happened to us, we would expect nothing less from the rest of the nation and we would do everything in our power to make the horrors stop.

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