Manobos take long road to normalcy

MANOBO children check visitors out as they wait for their trip back to their community after a year of taking shelter in Tandag City to flee military operations against communist guerrillas in lumad communities.CHRIS V. PANGANIBAN/INQUIRER MINDANAO

THEY are back home to lead normal lives anew after exactly a year and a day of hardship living in cramped makeshift tents inside the Surigao del Sur Sports Complex in Tandag City.

The process of normalization, however, could take more than just the homecoming of the Manobo residents of upland Sitio Han-ayan in the village of Diatagon in this town. They had been used to producing their own food in a self-sustaining method that the “lumad” had mastered.

This self sustenance was rudely interrupted when they had to flee their community on Sept. 1 last year when the military started to hunt for communist guerrillas and sympathizers among the natives. The lumad found themselves removed from the community where they grew and raised their own food and suddenly dependent on aid.

Difficulties in recovering

Gary Campos, 18, nephew of Dionel Campos, who was one of the three lumad leaders shot and killed in an attack believed to be perpetrated by Magahat-Bagani, a dreaded militia lumad group led by Datu Calpet Egua, said the lumad need to toil to recover from the damage wrought on their village while they were away from home.

“We will establish once again what we have productively built but that won’t be easy,” Campos said, adding that it would take time to rebuild Han-ayan as a thriving community of self-reliant Manobo people.

Han-ayan is a community which is abundant in farm products that residents grow on their organic farms and communal gardens. The people also raise different animals. These keep food on their tables readily available.

Rebuilding communities

It would take a lot of hard work among 3,000 lumad residents to bring normalcy back to their community. This would include rebuilding their water system and the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (Alcadev) which had been ransacked at the height of attacks on the lumad community.

Alcadev has served the lumad well. It is where high school lumad students are taught not only basic education but also technical skills training. But it has also come under fire from sectors that suspect it to be a communist-operated institution.

Alcadev has produced excellent graduates in the past that it received a national award from the Department of Education until its classes was stopped when Emerito Samarca, 54, executive director of Alcadev, was gunned down inside his office during a militia raid. Datu Juvello Sinzo, a respected Manobo tribal leader was also killed.

Though arrest warrants had been issued against suspects by a local court, the assailants remain at large and have gone scot-free. The failure of authorities to bring in the suspects bolstered suspicion that Egua’s ragtag Manobo Magahat-Bagani, believed to be behind the killings, is a creation of the military to sow fear and terror in the Manobo community in Han-ayan.

Aside from Manobo people in Han-ayan, lumad residents of at least 21 other communities were displaced in the counterinsurgency drive of the military. They sought refuge also at the Tandag sports complex.

Excited to go home

News that the 75th Infantry Battalion, which set up camp in the Manobo community, is now willing to pull out has drawn mixed reactions from evacuees crowding the sports oval.

The expression on the evacuees’ faces showed that they were excited to return home, though.

“We are happy and we really missed home,” said the mother of Richelle, a five-year-old girl whose family were the first to get a ride home even as evacuees are still awaiting final word from Col. Isidro Purisima, head of the 402nd Army Brigade, on a commitment to order soldiers out of the Manobo communities.

Richelle insisted in going with the first batch of Manobo people, who returned to Han-ayan to check conditions in the community, because the girl, according to her mother, already wanted to play in the family backyard, now covered with weeds.

Upon her return home, Richelle quickly grabbed a bite of pomelo and ripe guava from trees that are planted in their backyard.

“It’s much better going home here where we can do whatever we want to do to fix anything in our house,” Richelle’s mother said.

During the 366 days that the nearly 3,000 Manobo people sought shelter in Tandag, at least five people, three of them children, died of diseases. At least 86 women gave birth in the shelter.

Reclaiming what is theirs

“Their return home is a reclaiming of their ancestral land that the military took away from them in one year,” said a statement of the group Friends of Lumad in the Caraga region.

“Their sacrifice is immense as their triumph in returning to their communities without the presence of the military, without preconditions, safe and free to live, go to school and rebuild their lives according to their principles and unity,” the group added.

The lumad’s long cherished dream of returning home, with Army soldiers no longer around, came true around 3 p.m. on Friday.

In the presence of more than 700 witnesses from different sectors, led by Friends of the Lumad in Caraga convened by United Church of Christ in the Philippines Bishop Modesto Villasanta and Fr. Fortunato Estillore of the Indigenous Peoples’ Apostolate of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tandag, Col. Purisima ordered his men to dismantle the soldiers’ camp and leave the lumad communities in Kilometer 9 and Han-ayan.

Parting words

Mayor Kid Pedrozo and town councilors in Lianga accepted the turnover of the lumad villages from Purisima at the main entrance of Sitio Han-ayan. A short program was held just outside the gate of the Han-ayan Primary School and the compound of Alcadev.

Before Purisima formally declared the soldiers’ pullout, a leader of Malahutayong Pakigbisog sa mga Sumusunod (Persevering Struggle for the Next Generation) or Mapasu, an indigenous people’s organization, can’t help but confront Purisima.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we really lost trust in you because of what happened to our community a year ago,” Jose Campos, leader of Mapasu, bluntly told Purisima.

Campos is the older brother of Dionel.