A Banwaon activist was murdered in Agusan del Sur early this week, the latest victim in a spate of atrocities committed against indigenous people in Mindanao over the past few months.
An alert from the Healing the Hurt Project said Lito Abion, 44, a member of the lumad organization Tagdumahan, was gunned down around noon on Monday, September 28, in Dona Flavia, San Luis town, by three gunmen on a motorcycle.
The alert quoted a witness as saying the motorcycle was the same one used by the killers of Barangay Balit chairman Necasio “Agnis” Precioso in December last year.
Precioso’s murder, which has been blamed on troops of the Army’s 29th Infantry Battalion based in San Luis, was one of the reasons for the evacuation of some 200 families in Balit earlier this year.
Throughout eastern, southern and northern Mindanao, lumad communities openly accused by the military of supporting communist rebels have been subjected to worsening atrocities, either committed by soldiers or, increasingly, paramilitary groups used as “force multipliers” in counterinsurgency.
In Davao City, hundreds of Manobo, mostly from Talaingod, Davao del Norte, have been sheltering at a church compound for several months now after soldiers and militias occupied their communities and tribal schools tagged as advocating support for the rebels.
In Surigao del Sur, more than 3,000 refugees have been staying at the sports center in the provincial capital Tandag City after the September 1 murders of Emerito Samarca, executive director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development, an award-winning tribal school, and Manobo leaders Dionel Campos and Datu Bello Sinzo by the Magahat militia in Sitio Han-ayan, Lianga town as Army troops, who had occupied the community earlier, looked on from nearby hills.
In Bukidnon, five Manobo -- a blind 70-year old, his two sons and two nephews, the last two both minors -- kinsmen massacred in Pangantucan town in August were initially identified as communist rebels slain by Army forces in a “legitimate encounter” until a 15-year old survivor, another son of the slain elder, surfaced and recounted how his relatives were executed one by one.
And in another Bukidnon town, Kitao-tao, human rights advocates say the village of White Culaman, where the Army had recently arrested 13 Manobo accused of being rebels but who have since been ordered released by a court, as occupied by the military in conditions described as akin to “martial law.”
Healing the Hurt is a project funded by the European Union, through its European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights and its local implementing organization, the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-Northern Mindanao Sub-Region, to combat discrimination and human rights violations against the lumad.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/118274/another-lumad-activist-murdered-this-time-in-agusan-del-sur
Another media report written largely from the viewpoint of CPP front groups. The Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) is a suspected CPP-front.
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