Mindanao tribal chiefs hit RP’s homeland deal with MILF
By Abigail Kwok
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 19:22:00 07/31/2008
Filed Under: Mindanao peace process
MANILA, Philippines -- Leaders of various ethnic groups in Mindanao have called on the government to refrain from including their territories in the proposed expanded Moro homeland, saying they, too, have the right to self-rule.
In a “state of indigenous people’s address” released Thursday, the chieftains of 12 tribes in the southern Philippines said government’s agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to include their areas in the Bangsamoro Juridical Entities “lacked recognition of our legitimate rights to our ancestral domains.”
In a deal reached during informal negotiations mid-July in Malaysia, the government agreed to a further expansion of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to include 712 more villages.
But the chiefs of the Manobo, Talaandig, Pulangiyon, Mamanwa, Bla'an, Dibabawon, Mandaya, T'boli, Tagabawa-Bagobo, Erumanen-Menuvu, Higa-onon, and Subanon tribes said they, too, have the right to self-rule.
“The Moro people cannot claim the whole of Mindanao as their ancestral domain, because we also have our own territories, we have the right to self-determination. We recognize efforts made in the name of peace,” the lumad (tribal) leaders said.
The chieftains also criticized President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s eighth congressional speech Monday, saying the President “did not even address the state of indigenous peoples, the poorest of the poor -- all the more when she has highlighted jathropa expansions, mining, plantations and biofuels, most of which directly affects us and our lands.”
At the same time, they disputed Arroyo’s claim that poverty in the region was largely caused by the “endless Mindanao conflict.”
Poverty in Mindanao, they argued, is caused by the absence of policies that will allow the lumads to benefit from the utilization of the region’s vast resources.
“We are now hungrier. Our food crops are converted to high-value export crops such as bananas, pineapples and coffee. We are forced to abandon our farms,” they said.
“The promise of cheaper fuel prices can not compensate for the food crisis experienced by communities whose lands are taken for agrofuel plantations,” the leaders added.
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