Elders closely monitoring GRP-NDFP peace talks

From the often pro-CPP online publication Northern Dispatch Weekly (NORDIS) (Jan 1): Elders closely monitoring GRP-NDFP peace talks

LACUB, Abra — An elder of the Binongan tribe here said they are closely monitoring the peace negotiations between the Government of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and hope its outcome would truly benefit the people.

“Whatever the outcome of the peace talks, it will directly impact on our communities, that is why we are closely monitoring its development since it started,” Ama Bansilan Sawadan, a Binongan elder said in an interview.

Ama Bansilan said the Binongan communities have been among the poorest and most neglected in the country since he could remember. He added that their communities have been militarized since the Martial Law period.

The Binongan people territories are found within Lacub and Licuan-Baay towns of Abra.

According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Cordillera, 13 out of the 20 poorest towns in the region are found in Abra that include Lacub and Licuan-Baay. Lacub is the second poorest with 67.2% poverty incidence while Licuan Baay registered 46.7%. The Cordillera has 75 towns and two cities in its six provinces.

Ama Bansilan said that the people of Lacub live on farming and small scale mining. He explained that ever since, traditional pocket mining and gold panning augment their limited rice produce and other agriculture produce.

“We have limited areas for rice terraces along the mountain slopes so we need other sources of livelihood to augment our food needs, send our children to school and buy medicine if we get sick,” Ama Bansilan said.

Ama Bansilan said they have been deprived of a proper irrigation system and new technologies to increase the yield of their rice terraces. He added that they also engage in kaingin and gather bounties from the forest and river sources for additional food and livelihood.

“Since I was a kid we have relied on the rain and limited irrigation for our rice paddies. We have several good water sources here but an irrigation system has to be built to distribute the water to the rice paddies to allow us to at least have two rice croppings,” he said.

Ama Bansilan also pointed out that the roads in Lacub have not improved for a very long time. “We still have one trip going in and out of our town in a day due to the poor road condition, no bridges. It is still that vehicles must literally cross the river granting it is not swollen,” he said.

According to Ama Bansilan, their communities have been militarized since the Martial Law period up to the present. He said that military units deployed to their communities have left a long list of human rights violation ranging from harassment to torture and extrajudicial killings. He said soldiers have also abused their women.

He said their communities have been militarized because the Philippine Army has identified these as “red areas” or New People’s Army (NPA) strongholds.

Ama Bansilan said that it all started during Martial Law in the 1970s, when many of the youth then decided to take up arms to defend their homeland from massive environmental destruction brought about by the Cellophil Resources Corporation’s large scale logging operation and from human rights violations perpetrated against their people.

He added that their resistance stopped the Cellophil operations and foiled the proposed Binongan river dam.

“We cannot deny that some of our people chose to join the NPA because they believe that it is the solution to the continuing poverty, human rights violations and government neglect that we continue to suffer from,” Ama Bansilan said.

“But even those who have not taken up arms are being targeted by military operations which is a human rights violation,” Ama Bansilan said.

Ama Bansilan said that the peace negotiation is supposed to address these problems. “We are closely monitoring and are actively pushing for the peace talks because it will be instrumental in bringing peace to our communities and will answer our quest for justice,” he said.

It can be recalled that the Binongan people hosted a Cordillera region wide peace consultation in 2011 at Buneg, Lacub, Abra where representatives of the GRP and NDFP reciprocal working groups came and listened to the people’s demands.

Ama Bansilan said they have raised the same issues on poverty, human rights violations and government neglect during the 2011 consultation but there had been no concrete actions taken to address these. “What is worse is that the peace negotiations under the Aquino government broke down, we hope that this time under the Duterte administration it will prosper,” he said.

Kennedy Bangibang, the NDFP consultant for Cordillera and National Minority affairs said in an interview that he has been going around the Cordillera provinces to consult with the people about the issues they want to be addressed by the peace talks. “It is important for us to know too, what the people want and need especially now that the negotiation will tackle the comprehensive agreement on socio-economic reforms (CASER),” he said.

Bangibang said that aside from consulting about their demands, he also shares with them recent developments in the peace talks.

“We have to inform and educate the people about the recent agreements of both panels and how these would affect or impact them,” he said.

According to Bangibang, the leading issues raised by Cordillera communities involves the protection of their right to their ancestral lands and the right to manage their own resources. He added that the people also raised issues on militarization and the human rights violations perpetrated by soldiers deployed to indigenous communities.

“We will be raising these issues in the third round of talks this January for the panels to consider in the drafting of the CASER,” he said.

http://www.nordis.net/2017/01/elders-closely-monitoring-grp-ndfp-peace-talks/