Terrorized teachers, students of Bukidnon tribal school fear closure for defying local exec

From InterAksyon (Oct 4): Terrorized teachers, students of Bukidnon tribal school fear closure for defying local exec



The Fr. Fausto Tentorio Memorial School in Sitio Dao, Barangay White Culaman, Kitaotao, Bukidnon. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

The teachers and students of a tribal school in Kitaotao town, Bukidnon fear they will be forcibly shut any time after defying the order of a village chief to close for allegedly advocating support for communist rebels.

Evelyn Cabangal, one of three teachers at the Fr. Fausto Tentorio Memorial School in Sitio Dao, Barangay White Culaman, told InterAksyon.com by phone that their fears increased following reports that residents of Sitio Malinaw, “which is around four kilometers from Dao,” evacuated around midnight Sunday after “shots were fired and four houses were burned” Saturday night.

Several residents of Malinaw had earlier fled after the Army set up camp in White Culaman and, according to a recent fact-finding mission by human rights groups, began controlling residents’ movements, including their farm work, and prohibiting the use of cellular phones.

“The information we received is Malinaw is now deserted,” Cabangal said.

On Saturday morning, Cabangal said a parent of one of their students informed them that village chairman Felipe Cabugnason, accompanied by Army soldiers who have been occupying White Culaman for several weeks now, “called a ‘pulong-pulong’ (meeting) with residents of the community.”

Cabugnason, she said, “told the residents to go with him when he comes to shut us down and help him physically dismantle the school.”

The boarding school, named after the Italian missionary murdered by military-backed militiamen in Arakan, North Cotabato in 2011, opened last year and currently teaches Grade 7 and 8 students from far-flung Manobo communities.

White Culaman is the village where Army troops arrested 13 lumad late last month. All 13 have since been released from jail after a court dropped the charges filed against them.

Cabangal said they expect Cabugnason to make good his threat “most probably tomorrow (Monday).”

Thursday last week, Cabugnason issued a memorandum order to the Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation Inc., which set up and operates several free schools in lumad communities of northern Mindanao, giving it two days, or until Saturday, to close down the school in his village.

(See related story: http://www.interaksyon.com/article/118301/bukidnon-village-chief-orders-tribal-school-to-close-for-npa-ties)

Cabugnason’s memorandum cited three grounds for ordering the school’s closure:

 

It lacks legal documents, such as a permit to operate

It is “a threat to all the safety of the living people in our barangay (sic)” because of its supposed links to the NPA

The lumber used to build the school has supposedly not been paid for

Invoking the authority he said he is granted by Section 389 of the Local Government Code, Cabugnason warned that “failure to comply … with the said memorandum order within the time frame given” would lead to the barangay council “together with the people in our barangay” going to “where the school is located and we will automatically close the school.”

However, Cabangal and MISFI administrator Milagros Maglunsod-Tan said they would not obey what they called Cabugnason’s “illegal” order.

Although admitting they are worried over Cabugnason’s threat, Cabangal said she and her fellow teachers, as well as the 42 resident students of the school have decided to stay where they are and hold classes on Monday.

Contacted by phone, Tan said MISFI met Friday with Kitaotao officials, who promised to summon Cabugnason on Monday to explain his threat against the school.

Tan said she would also be meeting with the education superintendent in Malaybalay, under whose jurisdiction the school falls, to discuss the problem.

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/118425/terrorized-teachers-students-of-bukidnon-tribal-school-fear-closure-for-defying-local-exec