Members of the SOS Network stage a picket to protest the forced closure of lumad schools due to militarization of indigenous people's communities. (file photo)
A couple who donated land to host a school for indigenous children in Compostela town, Compostela Valley province were murdered in their home Thursday night, March 2, the Save Our Schools Network reported.
In an alert, SOS said Ramon Dagaas Pesadilla, 59, and his wife Leonela, 55, both members of the Compostela Farmers Association, were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in their home at the Gawad Kalinga Housing Project in Barangay Osmena around 9 p.m. Thursday.
Neighbors of the couple said the killers forcibly entered the house and then opened fire.
The Pesdaillas had donated some land for the lumad school Salugpungan Ta Tanu Igkanugon Community Learning Center at Spur Dos, Barangay Ngan in Compostela, SOS said.
Human rights groups have reported an upward trend in human rights violations against indigenous people ever since fighting resumed between communist rebels and government forces following the termination of both parties' unilateral ceasefires early last month.
In Mindanao, many lumad communities have been caught in a recurring cycle of human rights violations and displacement because they are suspected of supporting the rebels or are staunchly opposed to the entry of extractive industries such as mining and commercial logging and plantations within their ancestral lands.
Communities that host lumad schools have been especially targeted by state security forces who openly accuse the educational institutions of fomenting sympathy for the communist revoltuoary movement.
Among the more recent incidents, according to human rights group Karapatan, was the arrest last month of seven farmers from the Kaolo tribe in Sitio Tangis, Barangay Datal Anggas in Alabel town, Sarangani.
Karapatan said the farmers were picked up from their homes by troops of the Army's 73rd Infantry Battalion, who accused them of being New People's Army members, on February 12, a day after a reported clash with communist rebels near their village.
Detained at the Alabel police jail, the farmers were charged before the local prosecutor's office for furstrated murder and illegal possession of firearms only on February 15.
And in Maddela town, Quirino, Karapatan said a fact-finding mission documented the forced displacement of 691 persons from at least three villages after the deployment of troops from the 86th Infantry Battalion on February 18.
http://interaksyon.com/article/137440/couple-who-donated-land-for-lumad-school-murdered---sos-network
KARAPATAN and the Save Our Schools (SOS) network are both Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) front organizations. Their anti-government/military views are consistent with those of the CPP.
ReplyDeleteWhat is conveniently overlooked in this article is the complicity of the Maoist New People's Army (NPA) in much of the violence among lumad communities in Mindanao. Intimidation and assassination are routinely used by the NPA to ensure that the lumad in NPA controlled/contested areas are compliant with their demands and to weed out any opposition to communist organizing and control over their communities.