100,000 Tribal folk face eviction under 6 government projects, says farmers’ group
A “lumad” delegate joins at least 3,000 others at a rally on the UP campus in Diliman, Quezon City. NIÑO JESUS ORBETA
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Six projects initiated by the government and private sector are threatening to displace at least 100,000 indigenous peoples (IPs) from their ancestral domain, according to a leader of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP).
IP communities in Tarlac province are at risk of losing their ancestral lands to the 9,500-hectare Clark Green City of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and the 18,000-ha Crow Valley gunnery range of the Philippine Air Force, both in Capas town, said Joseph Canlas, KMP chair.
In Nueva Ecija, the Fort Magsaysay military reservation, originally spanning 73,000 ha but now reduced by seven presidential proclamations to 35,000 ha, has been shut to farmers and IPs of the province, Aurora and Bulacan, Canlas said.
He cited these projects on Wednesday when IPs from the Cordillera, Cagayan Valley, Ilocos and Central Luzon regions picketed the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command in Tarlac City.
The contingent of more than 500 IP leaders set up camp at the Department of Agrarian Reform in Quezon City on Thursday, joining the 3,000-strong caravan of national minorities asserting their right to self-determination and condemning military presence in their communities and what they said is the plunder of ancestral domains.
According to Canlas, power projects in Bataan, Pampanga and Tarlac also threaten Aetas in those provinces. He said the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone has covered 13,000 ha of ancestral domain in Casiguran town in Aurora province.
Canlas said the Duterte administration should ensure the survival of IP communities by “enforcing genuine agrarian reform, respecting their ancestral domains and pulling out soldiers and paramilitary men from these ancestral land
areas.”
The region’s seven provinces are home to Dumagat, Remontado, Ilongot, Bugkalot, Kalanguya, Aeta and Abelling tribes.
There are 50 IP communities in Aurora, 19 in Bataan, 20 in Bulacan, 96 in Nueva Ecija, 23 in Pampanga, 65 in Tarlac, and 79 in Zambales. As of 2007, there were 37,048 IP families registered in the region.
Only 12 out of 59 Central Luzon towns and cities hosting 352 indigenous communities are represented in local legislative councils although a law requires their mandatory representation in governance, according to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. —TONETTE OREJAS
