DAVAO CITY, Philippines – The communist New People’s Army has accused Datu Lito Gawilan, the head of the lumad group Federation of Manobo-Matigsalog Tribal Council (Femmatric), of alleged landgrabbing and harassment in the boundary areas of Bukidnon, Marilog, in Davao City and Arakan in North Cotabato.
Isabel Santiago, spokesperson of the NPA’s Herminio Alfonso Command in Southern Mindanao, warned that they would exact retribution on Gawilan and his group for intensifying “landgrabbing, robbery, gold bar trade and extortion.”
Bae Magdalena Suhat-Herbilla, chairperson of a Femmatric member, the Matigsalug-Manobo Tribal Women Mediator, said Datu Gawilan would give his side in his press conference on February 16.
The NPA statement accused Gawilan’s clan and family of “decades of landgrabbing, opportunism and sell-out of ancestral domain in Bukidnon, which dated back to the 1970s when the elderly Gawilan patriarch claimed to speak on behalf of all indigenous tribes to secure a deal with the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.”
The NPA accused Gawilan of being behind criminal syndicates responsible for the series of highway robberies, trading of fake gold bars, confiscating titled lands from non-lumad settlers, and securing at least a 10 percent stake in the small businesses along the Bukidnon national highway.
“Gawilan misrepresents the Matigsalog and Manobo tribes, by claiming to protect their ancestral domain, but actually making these areas readily available for rubber plantation and mining concessions,” the statement said.
“Holding a Certificate of Ancestral Domain (CADT) title covering resource-rich areas of Kitaotao town in Bukidnon province, Arakan town, in North Cotabato and Marilog district in Davao City, Gawilan dangles these lands as leverage to obtain more lucrative deals from the capitalists,” the statement added.
The National Commission on Indigenous People’s (NCIP) approved Gawilan’s CADT covering not only the Kitaotao town but also border areas of Arakan and Marilog in Davao City.
The statement said the military’s 403rd Brigade and the 8th Infantry Battalion have been backing up Gawilan, and that the military’s peace and development special operations team has been intimidating lumad and non-lumad settlers and staging fake mass surrenders.
Colonel Leopoldo Galon, spokesperson of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command, said Gawilan has been part of the community outreach for peace and development operations that the military has been regularly conducting in the area. Gawilan is a provincial board member of Bukidnon, whom the 8th IB and the 403rd Brigade consult about their engagements with lumad communities in Bukidnon, according to Galon.