DAVAO CITY—Violence continues to haunt “lumad” communities in Mindanao even as the chair of the House committee on indigenous peoples echoed a call made by a top Church leader for areas where lumad live to be declared zones of peace.
In Sibagat town, Agusan del Sur province, armed men burned a hut being used by teachers as stock room in a lumad school on Thursday.
Lorena Durilag, a member of the staff of the Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Development (Alcadev) school in the village of Padiay in Sibagat, said the armed men arrived at 2 a.m. and burned the hut where teachers kept books, school supplies, a sewing machine, rice, a generator and kitchen utensils.
Durilag said the men fled after setting the hut on fire.
In Kidapawan City, Rep. Nancy Catamco (Liberal Party), chair of the House committee on indigenous peoples, said the proposal made by Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle for indigenous areas to be declared peace zones is one of the best solutions to the plight that had befallen the lumad.
Catamco said she supports Tagle’s proposal “for both the military forces and the (National Democratic Front) to respect the ancestral domain communities of indigenous peoples as zones of peace.”
She said she had asked President Aquino to consider the full protection of lumad communities as an urgent item in the government agenda.
The attack on the lumad school in Sibagat took place more than a month after paramilitary men attacked another Alcadev school in Lianga, Surigao del Sur.
On Sept. 1, members of the paramilitary group Magahat-Bagani swooped down on the Alcadev compound in Lianga and killed Emerito Samarca, the school’s executive director. In front of residents, who were gathered in a basketball court, the paramilitary men also killed tribal leaders Dionel Campos and Datu Bello Sinzo.
The killings led to the evacuation of at least 3,000 residents in five towns in Surigao del Sur. The evacuees have been staying at the province’s sports complex in Tandag City.
Surigao del Sur Gov. Johnny Pimentel has accused the military of creating, training, funding and arming the paramilitary group, which the Armed Forces of the Philippines denied.
Pimentel said the military has created a monster—the Magahat-Bagani—that it could no longer control.
Catamco said the establishment of zones of peace would guarantee that lumad communities are free from outside influence, either by the armed forces or communist rebels. Nico Alconaba and Carlo Agamon, Inquirer Mindanao