Tribe threatens to occupy disputed Boracay land

It’s not only the heat that sizzling in Boracay.  A land dispute between the indigenous people of Aklan and some businessmen is about to boil over.

Members of the Ati tribe are now threatening to occupy the two-hectare beach property earlier awarded to them, even without a government order installing them on the land, to protect it from further development by the other rich claimants.

“We’re following the due process. And yet this due process is giving undue advantage to the rich claimants who continue to build structures. We might end up without a land of our own,” Delsa Justo, chieftain of the Boracay Ati Tribal Organization, said in an interview.

The tribespeople are racing against time to get hold of the property located in Barangay Manoc-Manoc on the southern tip of the 1,032-hectare island-resort before it’s allegedly gobbled up by the structures put up by the Banico, Sanson and Gelito families.

The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) is set to issue a resolution to finally settle the dispute in a few days, but this won’t be immediately enforceable. The other claimants can still appeal  within 15 days after receiving the order.

A lot of things could happen in 15 days, and if the order is unfavorable to them, the other claimants could bring the case to the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court. By the time it’s finally resolved, there would be nothing left of the property, the Atis said.

So their option now is to occupy the property and protect it, they said.

Meantime, President Aquino should follow up on the NCIP’s award of the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title  given to the Atis in January 2011, and take up their case, said Justo, who traveled to Manila in the hope of getting the installation order from the NCIP.

Justo, together with four other tribe members, Sr. Hermina Sutarez and Jose Antonio Morillo, was told by the NCIP en banc on Friday morning that the resolution won’t be issued until next week, but this won’t be enforceable until after the other claimants had seen and commented on it.

The other claimants had filed motions canceling the title issued to the Ati with the NCIP and the regional trial court in Kalibo, showing deeds of sale as proof of their ownership of the property. With the row still unresolved, the Atis are staying in a one-hectare property that is also being claimed by politicians in Bgy. Balabag.

Anthropologists said the Atis had inhabited the island long before the earliest Visayan migrants came. By the 1970s, tourists began streaming into the island, famed for its powdery white sand beaches and crystalline waters.