ILOILO CITY, Philippines—The Ati tribe on Boracay Island will not be removed from the ancestral land that they occupied on Tuesday even without a writ of possession, according to Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo.
But Robredo directed local officials to maintain the “status quo” and see to it that no structures are erected by the Ati and other land claimants in the contested area in the island’s Barangay Manoc-Manoc while negotiations to resolve the issue were ongoing.
Boracay is part of the municipality of Malay, Aklan.
“They can stay there as long as they do not occupy structures of other claimants and they will not extend the fence they have erected,” Robredo told the Inquirer in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
In negotiations with village officials, the Ati tribespeople also agreed to limit to 10 the number of persons to stay in the enclosed area during the night, said Sr. Victoria Ustan of the Holy Rosary Parish Ati Mission, who has been living among and helping the tribe.
Nuns from the mission and their supporters from the non-governmental organization Katarungan Filipinas were also staying with the Atis.
The Ati tribe has been staying at a one-hectare community in Sitio Bolabog in Barangay Balabag but have been continuously threatened with eviction by its owners.
Chief Inspector Christopher Prangan, chief of the Boracay Tourist Assistance Center, said policemen have been deployed to the area to maintain order.
Tribe members and their supporters on Tuesday occupied part of the 2.1-hectare land which had been granted to them by the National Commission on Indigenous People as a permanent relocation site of 40 Ati families or 200 tribe members.
The NCIP turned over a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title to the property to the tribe on January 21, 2011 but the tribespeople have not yet obtained a writ of possession, which is a court order that formally installs legitimate owners of a property.
Dionesia Banua, NCIP Commissioner for Island Groups and the Visayas, said the commission is preparing to issue the writ.
“We appeal to claimants not to stop the Ati. They have every right to the land because the whole island is considered their ancestral domain and they were just given a small portion of it,” she said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Anthropologists and the NCIP have supported the claim of the Ati that they were the earliest settlers on the 1,032-hectare Boracay Island long before tourists and other settlers discovered the island and developed it into one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations.
But at least three land claimants were contesting the CADT, insisting that they were the legitimate owners based on tax declarations.
The Catholic Church has thrown its support behind the Ati occupation of the land.
Kalibo Bishop Jose Corazon Tala-oc visited the tribe on Wednesday to show solidarity with them.
Bishop Broderick Pabillo, national director of the National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice and Peace, the social action arm of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, called on the government to formally install the tribe.
“The government should see to the swift implementation of the law. It has been more than one year since the land has been awarded to them (Ati tribe) and they have not been formally installed,” the prelate said in a statement.