Binay urges 'immediate action' on lumad's plight as groups blast PNoy for 'washing hands'

From InterAksyon (Sep 9): Binay urges 'immediate action' on lumad's plight as groups blast PNoy for 'washing hands'



Lumad women talk with each other at the sport center in Tandag City, Surigao del Sur where closeto 3,000 refugees have sought shelter from atrocities blamed on military-backed militias. (photo by Erwin Mascarinas, InterAksyon.com)

Vice President Jejomar Binay urged “immediate government action” on the atrocities that have driven close to 3,000 lumad from their homes in Surigao del Sur as various groups accused President Benigno Aquino III of “washing his hands” of the problem.

The killings and evacuations, said a statement from Joey Salgado, Binay’s media affairs chief, “cries out for immediate government action. 

“The Vice President is asking the concerned agencies to look into the matter thoroughly and take the needed steps to protect the rights of aggrieved individuals,” it added.

The Surigao del Sur evacuation peaked when some 2,000 residents of Han-ayan, Barangay Diatagon, Lianga town fled on September 1 following the murders of Emerito Samarca, executive director of the award-winning ALCADEV tribal school, and tribal leaders Dionel Campos and Juvillo “Bello” Sinzo by gunmen of the Magahat militia.

At a roundtable with the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Tuesday, Aquino, asked about the plight of the lumad, replied: “There is no campaign to kill anybody in this country. There is a campaign to go after anybody who commits crimes regardless of who they are. And I think we have an adequate track record to show you the successes of people who have long been wanted that are already been apprehended and the process still continues.”

His words drew angry reactions from groups that have been advocating for the rights of the indigenous people and the disbanding of the militias.

Even Surigao del Sur Governor Johnny Pimentel has been demanding, albeit in vain, that the Army dismantle the militias. On Wednesday, he said only solution to the constant killings and evacuations of the lumad would be to “disarm, disband or kill” the militias.

The Rural Missionaries of the Philippines in Northern Mindanao called Aquino’s statement “both a denial of what is going on, and at the same time an accusation targeted at the victims butchered by the government forces and supporting paramilitary minions.”

“If President Aquino says the campaign is to go after a person ‘who commits crimes’ and dismisses the killings as justified actions of the military, then he is implying that those massacred and murdered by his forces were criminals,” the RMP added.

The Save Our Schools Network, which campaigns for the preservation of schools set up by nongovernmental organizations in tribal communities, such as ALCADEV, which the military has openly accused of advocating support for communist rebels, scored Aquino for not “listening to the accounts of direct victims” of the atrocities before drawing conclusions about the killings of the lumad.

The activist League of Filipino Students, which staged a “die-in” in front of the Department of Justice in Manila Wednesday, said Aquino’s “empty” response “justifies the heightened militarization of lumad communities.”

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/117283/binay-urges-immediate-action-on-lumads-plight-as-groups-blast-pnoy-for-washing-hands