Young Ifugaos urge elders to exclude rape cases from tribal settlements

BAGUIO CITY—Rape cases have risen in upland Cordillera provinces like Ifugao, so families, among them young professionals, have urged their community elders to exclude rape victims when they mediate tribal disputes.

Young Ifugao  have been consulting their elders about amending tribal mediation practices, in light of reports that rape suspects pay cash to clear complaints through tribal councils, said Joyce Niwane, Ifugao social welfare and development officer, during a social workers’ forum and consultation here on Wednesday.

The crime map that is periodically drawn up  by the Cordillera police tracks the steady rise in rape complaints recorded in the provinces of Benguet and Ifugao.

The National Statistical Coordination Board, in its website, described “an increasing trend [in Cordillera rape complaints] from 38 cases in 1995 to 70 cases in 2005.”

Last year, Benguet dealt with more than 100 child abuse cases, some of them involving incestuous rape. The report compelled the Benguet government to organize a social justice summit to discuss and address the problem.

In Ifugao, Niwane’s office recorded 25 complaints involving sexual abuse or exploitation of children from January to June this year. The office also reported that three minors were accused of rape  in a list of cases covering July to September.

The Ifugao social welfare office report said young rape suspects claimed that they committed the crime “after viewing a series of …  sex videos and X-rated movies through [mobile  phones], [pornographic] magazines and [programs with sexual content on] television.”

Instead of addressing the problem head on, ritual mediation almost always results in a settlement, “partly to fulfill the mandate of all tribal agreements that is to preserve community peace,” Niwane said.

“We are now trying to convince the elders to exclude rape cases or cases of violence against women from the mediation process,” she said.

“We asked them not to discount the element of social justice in dealing with this emerging problem in the indigenous communities,” she said.

One option is to try to reconcile traditional mediation processes with modern law, she said.

Last week, the local women’s group, Innabuyog, also discussed conflicts between feminist groups and indigenous community traditions in addressing rape cases.

Innabuyog, an affiliate of the party-list group Gabriela, said it had investigated rape complaints in Abra and Kalinga provinces that  were settled through the intervention of families or community elders. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon