‘Broken record’: Tribe appeals for stop to logging

LUCENA CITY—A tribe calling Sierra Madre its home is calling on President Benigno Aquino to heed calls for his administration to clamp down on logging in the mountain range and stop its destruction.

“We never waver in our belief that President Aquino will respect the indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination,” said Ramcy Astoveza, head of the Agta tribe in Sierra Madre.

“We’re now reiterating our appeal to him to protect Sierra Madre, to ensure the bright future of our tribe,” he said.

He said while the law mandates the consent of tribal people as a prerequisite to projects, the right of indigenous people to “free, prior and informed consent has not been fully respected.”

Indigenous people, he said, have been suffering for too long from government neglect.

In the Sierra Madre, the government not only failed to deliver basic services to people but also failed to protect them from logging and continuing clashes between government soldiers and communist guerrillas, he said.

Logging, he said, continues to destroy the mountain with the help of corrupt environment officers.

Bishop Rolando Tria-Tirona, of the prelature of Infanta, said calls for the government to stop the continued “rape” of Sierra Madre already “sounds like a broken record.”

“It seems that we’re appealing to deaf ears,” Tria-Tirona said in an earlier interview.

A priest leading a campaign to stop logging in Sierra Madre had tagged President Aquino as a failure in terms of dealing with the devastating effects of global warming.

Fr. Pete Montallana, head of  Sierra Madre Network Alliance, said if dealing with climate disasters was a school subject, the President “miserably failed to pass.”

“The final exams in the environment subject is the CDO (Cagayan de Oro) experience,” said Montallana in a phone interview.

Montallana, Franciscan priest from the prelature of Infanta, said Mr. Aquino “has only himself to blame because he has consistently refused to listen to environmentalists.”