Teachers barred from going to new lumad school set for inauguration Monday

From InterAksyon (Oct 11): Teachers barred from going to new lumad school set for inauguration Monday



In July 2015 file photo, members of the Save Our Schools network in Manila protest the closure of lumad schools, which they said has disrupted the education of thousands of young indigenous peoples. In the latest incident, some 30 teachers and guests on their way to a lumad school that was to be inaugurated Monday were barred at a military checkpoint Sunday. INTERAKSYON.COM

Several teachers and guests on their way to the inauguration of a new tribal school in Bagangga town, Davao del Norte were stopped by troops of the Army’s 67th Infantry Battalion.

Milagros Maglunsod-Tan, administrator of the Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation Inc., which operates several schools set up in indigenous people’s communities, said around 30 of them were on their way to Kasunugan when they were stopped at a checkpoint by soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Miguel Porras in Barangay Mahan-ub around 3:40 p.m.

The Kasunugan school, MISFI’s newest, opened only in June and is scheduled to be blessed and formally inaugurated Monday.

Tan was interviewed by phone while she and her companions were still at the checkpoint two hours after they were stopped. InterAksyon.com also asked her to relay a request to Porras for an interview but he refused to give his number.

In another conversation around sunset, Maglunsod-Tan said they had decided to return to town to file a complaint with the local police and spend the night, and because "we were not safe at the checkpoint since there are no houses there."

She said they are determined to make their way to Kasunugan Monday morning.

This is the second time in less than two weeks that teachers and guests on their way to attend activities at tribal schools have been barred.

On September 28, more than a hundred staff, students and guests on their way to the 11th foundation anniversary of the Salugpungan Ta Ta'nu Igkanugon Learning Center Inc., which also operates a network of tribal schools, were stopped by members of the Alamara militia at a military detachment in Talaingod, Davao del Norte.

Although they eventually found an alternate route to the celebration, a number of the attendees were harassed by the military and police on their way back from the festivities.

According to Maglunsod-Tan, Porras “told us we could not proceed because there had been an encounter and one of their soldiers had been hit by a rebel sniper and they needed to clear the area first.”

However, she added, “we contacted our colleagues and members of the community in Kasunugan who told us they knew nothing about any encounter.”

Mahan-ub barangay captain Roy Nazareno tried to negotiate with the soldiers for their passage but was refused, Maglunsod-Tan said.

The military has openly accused schools run by MISFI and Salugpungan and the communities they serve of supporting communist rebels.

The past years have seen many documented incidents of mass evacuations because of the occupation by soldiers and military-backed militias of lumad communities and schools, often marked by atrocities.

However, the lumad and the groups who support them say the military accusations and the subsequent atrocities stem from their opposition to the entry of large-scale mining, logging and commercial agriculture into their ancestral lands.

In Surigao del Sur, more than 4,000 persons have so far left their homes since August, the bulk of them after the September 1 murders of Emerito Samarca, executive director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development, and Manobo leaders Dionel Campos and Datu Bello Sinzo in Lianga town by the Magahat militia.

In the town of Kitaotao, Bukidnon, the barangay captain of White Culaman had also threatened to force the closure of the MISFI-run Fr. Fausto Tentorio Memorial School, a free boarding school for Grade 7 and 8 lumad students, but the Department of Education opposed the move.

The school was named after the Italian missionary murdered in Arakan, North Cotabato by militiamen in 2011.

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/118772/teachers-barred-from-going-to-new-lumad-school-set-for-inauguration-monday