‘Lumad’ spill blood on UP Diliman campus
Blood spilled on the stairs of Palma Hall on the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City, yesterday as lumad protesters slaughtered a chicken as offering to their god to officially open the Kampuhan sa Diliman, a weeklong cultural exchange between the academic community and the delegates of Manilakbayan sa Mindanao.
“The ritual is to ask for the permission of Talabugta, the god or owner of the land,” Jomorito “Datu Imbanwag” Goaynon, a Higaonon chief, said on Tuesday.
Some 700 lumad—Cebuano for indigenous peoples—from 18 tribes in Mindanao arrived on Monday night and camped out on UP grounds as part of the caravan protest against violence in their communities allegedly perpetrated by Army-backed vigilante groups fighting New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas and land grabbers.
Goaynon said 144 lumad leaders and advocates had been killed this year and 87 alternative schools face closure because of the military’s counterinsurgency program.
UP Diliman chancellor Michael Tan welcomed the “Manilakbayanis,” saying the hosting of the lumad was not an issue of approval.
“It is a right of the lumad to go to the national university. This is your university,” Tan said, adding that UP and the lumad shared common issues in saving children and saving schools.
“The lumad schools uphold not just the right of the lumad people but also the heritage. The lumad schools must survive and UP is ready to support you all the way,” Tan said.
Goaynon, spokesperson of Manilakbayan and first nominee of the Sulong Katribu party-list group, said there was a conflict between how the government and the indigenous peoples define development.
“This is the reason for the intensifying violation of human rights, especially on the issue of extrajudicial killings,” he said.
“We do not want to damage our ancestral land. We do not want to destroy the environment. Because we believe that environment is life. Nature is the mother of the lumad,” Goaynon said.
“Our ancestral land is our marketplace, our church, our pharmacy, our hunting ground, which we stand to lose if we let the big mining companies and plantations take control,” he said.
Goaynon said that because of these beliefs, the lumad had been branded by the military as NPA supporters or members.
“We are being forced to join the paramilitary groups that go after those who stand up against mining firms. If you refuse, you will be targeted, you will be killed or you will face false charges,” he said.
Goaynon said slain Loreto Mayor Dario Otaza was the head of the Taptap paramilitary group and he used his status as datu to claim several hectares of Manobo ancestral domain and sell it to plantations and mining corporations.
The NPA had claimed responsibility for the killing of Otaza and his son.
The UP Diliman vice chancellor for community affairs, Nestor Castro, said there had been warnings against hosting the Manilakbayanis because they were communists.
“But in our view, whatever the political line, whatever the ideology, you can enter the university. The university is open to a discourse of ideas as long as these are not carried out through violent means,” Castro said.
The Manilakbayan 2015 is calling on the Aquino administration to dismantle paramilitary groups, to pull out the military in schools and communities and to prosecute the perpetrators of the attacks on lumad leaders.
