Manilakbayan to mass up thousands in time for Apec

From the Daily Tribune (Oct 24): Manilakbayan to mass up thousands in time for Apec

The government faces a huge potential headache in hosting world leaders in Manila during the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Leaders’ Summit on Nov. 18 to 19 when protesters from Mindanao and the Visayas are joined by their city counterparts to complete a one month protest caravan against the Aquino administration.

The march called Manilakbayan started in Mindanao with 700 participants but is targeting to mobilize into tens of thousands of participants when they reach Manila during the Apec week.

The Manilakbayan will join the People’s Caravan, the main group that will hold protests parallel to the Apec event.

Foreign delegates particularly “internationalists and activists from countries affected by globalization” are also expected to be part of the protest action, according to the militant website Bulatlat.

Most of the protesters are actual evacuees, and members of the Lumád tribe who have been forced out of their communities by the presence of military troops and paramilitary groups, meant to clear the way for large-scale mining, hydropower projects, or plantations — features of the government’s “development” model. Many are victims of human rights violations — families of the killed or disappeared, or were themselves tortured and detained, or charged with trumped-up criminal cases, according to the website.

“As the ‘lakbayanis’ demand peace and justice in Mindanao, they actually also present an option to many others impoverished and oppresed: to join them in the struggle to assert their rights,” Bulatlat said.

“What is happening in Mindanao is just part of the overall attack against the Filipino people who are waging resistance,” Kerlan Fanagel, chairman of Pasaka day Salugpungan Kalimudan (Pasaka), and third nominee of Sulong Katribu partylist, said.

Bulatlat said as the government’s “development model” implements policies that worsen poverty, hunger, and landlessness, the people’s resistance consequently grows in the cities and countryside, with some opting to wage armed struggle and join the New People’s Army (NPA).

“This resistance, whether armed or unarmed, is aimed to be put out by a state policy: Oplan Bayanihan,” a military campaign in the provinces to supposedly win the hearts and minds of Filipinos, it said.

Thousands of protesters are expected to join the Manilakbayan, with other “lakbayanis” from the northern, central and southern Luzon.

Fanagel said the presence of the Manilakbayan amplifies various campaigns in the capital, such as those against corruption, militarization, and imperialist plunder.

“There is a resistance, and that is what Oplan Bayanihan aims to quell…the difference is, we have no weapons, we are civilian organizations staunchly defending our environment, land, communities and life. Why should they attack us?” Fanagel said.

The Katribu Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayang Pilipino (Katribu) said 60 percent of the approved mining applications in the country are in indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands, covering one million hectares.

In Mindanao, some 500,000 hectares of lands are covered by mining concessions, mostly in Lumád ancestral domains. Another 700,000 hectares are devoted to palm oil, banana and pineapple plantations owned by multinational corporations.

But it is not only in Mindanao, but all over the country, that indigenous and peasant communities are being displaced by mining, agribusiness plantations and mega dam projects. And they are not willing to make more sacrifices “for the sake of development.”

Militarization on the rise

Fanagel said at least 55 battalions of the Philippine Army, more than half of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, are now deployed in Mindanao, continuing the increasing trend of militarization in 2012. Augmenting them are at least 20 Lumád paramilitary groups, armed and organized by the AFP.

The first Manilakbayan in 2012 was a campaign against the attacks on the Lumád and increased human rights violations, now even more brutal in President Aquino’s — and Oplan Bayanihan’s — last year, Fanagel said.

These attacks include extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, military encampment in communities, harassment and threats on schools, filing of trumped-up charges, forcible recruitment into paramilitary groups, indiscriminate firing, and, the only way to escape it all, forced evacuation.

Katribu said that during Aquino’s five years, 71 indigenous peoples have been killed, 57 of them were Lumád. Indigenous peoples resisting development aggression make up a quarter of the more than 218 victims of killings in the past five years.

Some 40,000 were temporarily displaced due to intensified military operations.

Fanagel was included in kidnapping charges filed against those helping in the evacuation center at the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Haran center in Davao City.

In Mindanao alone, at least 250 leaders of groups of indigenous, peasant, workers, youth, human rights, health workers and other sectors have been charged with fabricated criminal cases.

Similar forms of harassment were experienced in other regions, such as in Cagayan Valley where 69 regional and community leaders were charged with kidnapping with homicide.

In Metro Manila, activists are tailed, visited in their homes and threatened by suspected military agents.

Fanagel said the Manilakbayan also aims to give perspective to those desperate and lost in the confusion of Metro Manila. “Many people here have no homes, jobs, nothing, and are just trying to survive from day to day as individuals,” he said.

The middle class tend to see their role only through charity work, but everyone must make a stand in problems plaguing the country, Fanagel said.

“But they have the option to be with a community, to join the struggle, the movement to change society,” Fanagel said. More than just bringing Mindanao’s problems to Manila, Manilakbayan serves to show what united communities can do.

 http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/manilakbayan-to-mass-up-thousands-in-time-for-apec