Archbishop Socrates Villegas. FILE PHOTO
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has urged the Aquino administration to investigate the recent killings of lumad leaders and the displacement of thousands of indigenous people in Surigao Del Sur province in Mindanao.
“The CBCP asks the government for an honest, thorough, impartial, and speedy investigation so that the guilty may be held to account for their wrong-doing,” CBCP president Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement on Friday.
READ: Probe sought into ‘lumad’ killings
The CBCP said they are “disturbed” on how the government “(has) been quick to exonerate the militia group of wrongdoing.”
“This alarming eagerness to deny culpability does not augur well for truth and justice,” Villegas said.
“If made before any such investigation, they disturbingly suggest a refusal to hold accountable those to whom the administration so eagerly extends its mantle of protection,” he added.
On September 1, two lumad leaders and a school head were killed by Magahat-Bagani paramilitary forces under the 36th and 75th Infantry Battalion-Philippine Army.
Lumad leaders Dionel Campos and Datu Juvello Sinzo were gunned down in front of the lumad community.
Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (Alcadev) school director Emerito Samarca was found dead with multiple stab wounds and a slit throat on the school premises in Lianga, Surigao Del Sur.
When asked during the Meet the Inquirer forum on September 8 about the killings of lumad, President Benigno Aquino III said that the government is on an anticrime drive and not a campaign against indigenous peoples.
READ: Aquino on ‘lumad’ killings: There is no campaign to kill anybody
Villegas said the use of militia groups for the government’s counter-insurgency campaign is “troubling.”
“If militia groups cannot fit within a structure of clear authority and command by legitimate state authority, they should not be tolerated, much less employed as mercenaries by the State,” he said.
He said the government’s failure to protect the rights of indigenous people rights “only underscores their plight as marginalized” as they are already disadvantaged in a number of ways.
“This cannot be just. This cannot be the will of God,” Villegas said. Nestor Corrales/IDL