From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Philippines: CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 08:23:07 GMT

The ACTivist July/August 92

The ACTivist is published monthly (one issue during July and August)
by the ACT for Disarmament Coalition, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto, 
Ontario, Canada, M5S 2R4, phone 416-531-6154, fax 416-531-5850,
e-mail web:act.

Reprint freely, but please credit us (and send us a copy!)

/** gen.newsletter: 121.21 **/
** Written 11:35 pm  Aug 11, 1992 by web:act in cdp:gen.newsletter **
CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

By May Primera
Special to The ACTivist

With my eyes closed, I could still feel the dust on my face as the 
"skylab" roared through the scabrous path and past the verdant 
groves. "Skylab" was the name the villagers had given the puny 
motorbike that could seat six people -- one person in front of the 
driver, two behind him and two on each side of the horizontal slab 
of wood tied tightly to its rear like an outrigger. The unsuspecting 
bike could run more than 60 mph on the narrow dirt roads and 
uncleared pathways. There are no traffic patrol guards this side of 
Southern Philippines. Only armalite-toting men in faded fatigues.

I came from Manila where the dirt is less organic, to the far bucolic
 south, to write a story about indigenous Filipinos who were driven 
away from their ancestral lands by the private army of a rich 
Chinese-Filipino businessman. I travelled for a day from Davao City 
to South Cotabato with two community organizers, riding on skylabs, 
walking on a hanging bridge and crossing the river on the back of 
a water buffalo. Our four-hour bus ride was interrupted for 15 
minutes by military men who searched the rusting vehicle and 
frisked the male passengers. "Last week it was the NPAs (New 
People's Army, the opposition guerrilla army) who were manning 
this checkpoint," the passengers said, casually laughing away the 
constantly threatened 'peace and order situation'.

I finally met the terrified indigenous T'bolis in a remote barrio 
building makeshift huts from palm leaves and sharing with each 
other what little food they could harvest from the land. They 
offered us delicious rice coffee and boiled cassava, a staple for the
 hardworking farmers. Then the stories were told.

The T'bolis have lived in South Cotabato since time immemorial. 
It was they who named some of the towns and barrios here. They 
are among the 4.5 million members of some 40 indigenous 
communities living in the remote interiors of Luzon, Mindanao, 
and some islands of Visayas. Like the rest of the indigenous peoples, 
T'bolis have a distinct language and culture, having been least 
influenced by Christianity and Hispanization. To escape colonization,
 some of these tribal folks withdrew to the hinterlands while 
others stood their ground successfully.

But their existence as distinct peoples of the Philippines continues 
to be threatened by land-grabbing lowlanders, the encroachment 
of multinational corporations, militarization, and so-called 
development projects of the government.

The T'bolis I visited were among the casualties of the 
government's neglect and lack of clearcut policies on ancestral 
land claims. They were victims of the government's lack of political 
will to go after violators of human rights, in this case the private 
army of a landowner created supposedly to protect property from
 communist rebels, but in fact used against these peaceable 
people.

The tribespeople told us how their straw houses were strafed 
five days before we arrived. When the frightened T'bolis came 
out of their houses clutching children and meagre belongings to
 their chests, the armed men poured gasoline on the huts and 
told the people never to come back. "If you come back, we will 
kill you all," one tribeswoman remembered the armed men 
as saying. About 300 families were displaced as a result of the 
vicious attack. Although no one was reported killed, many were 
wounded and at least ten men were brutally beaten with armalite 
butts.

For three days and three nights they stayed in the woods, near a 
creek where the cows of the businessman drank. They were 
eventually found by the ranch guards and chased away with 
gunfire. "Even our children were shot at," they said. Cattle get 
better treatment here than human beings.

They dispersed in small groups and sought assistance from 
the church. Some travelled on foot for days to reach their 
relatives' homes, homes of people who have momentarily given 
up fighting for their land and have rebuilt in other remote areas.

The land of the T'bolis, from which they were driven, is 5,000 
hectares of plains where hundreds of cattle graze. "As far as 
the eyes can see," Carlos Blusan, the tribe spokesperson, 
described the land's vastness. Formerly called Lacag, it was 
renamed ANSA Farms, after the names of the landowner 
and his partner.

The strafing and burning of the T'bolis' houses in November, 
1990, was, at the time, the most violent of the series of demolitions 
since the beginning of the 1980s when T'bolis started reoccupying
 the land they believe to be theirs. Antonio Nocom, the businessman
 to whom the title of the land belongs, was said to have duped 
the tribal elders into signing away their land rights in the early 
60s. The guileless tribesmen were made to believe that the papers 
were just a permission for the businessman to raise a few goats 
on their land. "A week later, cows were brought in and the 
lowlanders started building fences. The fences grew bigger 
and bigger until our parents came home from the farm one day 
to find their houses demolished and fenced in," the dusky, 
strong-jawed Blusan related.

But the stubborn men and women were unfazed. They kept 
coming back and rebuilding even as the keepers of the ranch 
kept destroying. The farmhands would lead cattle to the 
Tbolis' farms to trample and graze on their corn and other farm 
crops. They accused tribesmen of stealing cows and then beat 
them up beyond recognition. The tribe told the story of a man 
named Alex, whose flesh was sliced thinly with a bolo in front 
of his neighbours: "This is the way to slice a cow's meat," a 
T'boli woman, Neneng, recalled the man as saying while Alex 
screamed in agony.

The reality is, 20 per cent of the 60 million population of the 
Philippines own 80 per cent of the lands. Philippine governments, 
which have a long history of elitism, have been known to cater to 
the needs of the rich and their visions of industrialization. Thus, 
it stands impotent as weathly and powerful landgrabbers drive 
tribal families away from the lands they have inhabited for 
centuries.

The survival of the indigenous peoples' culture and way of life 
is imperilled by the government's inconsiderate policies of 
allowing the construction of various "development" projects 
like hydroelectric dams, without prior consultation with the 
local tribespeople. These projects, which invade ancestral lands, 
do not serve to improve the lives of the tribespeople. On the 
contrary, the structures have caused the destruction of their 
traditional way of life.

A friend of mine who works for TABAK -- the Alliance of 
Advocates for Indigenous Peoples' Rights -- wrote to me recently 
about the killing of one of the tribal leaders of the Lacag T'bolis. 
She also reported how the area -- now declared by the military 
as a no-man's-land -- was bombed by the same armed elements 
after the tenacious T'bolis tried to reoccupy it last year.

The creation of private armies is just one aspect of the 
militarization going on in the Philippines. In 1987, when peace 
negotiations between the government and the revolutionary 
group called the National Democratic Front failed to result in a 
compromise, the government adopted a "Total War Policy" aimed 
at wiping out insurgency by 1992. Thousands of troops were 
deployed and continue to be sent into areas believed to be 
occupied by the New Peoples' Army. Vigilante groups were formed 
including private armies to quell dissent and silence the poor 
peasants who are asking for land rights.

Cause-oriented groups, the churches and people's organizations 
are one in denouncing the senseless slaughter of the innocents 
caught in the crossfire of this bitter conflict. Non-government 
organizations committed to working towards genuine development 
for the people urge the international community to pressure the 
Philippine government to negotiate anew with the NDF and other 
rebelling forces for a just and lasting peace. It should be a peace 
based on the resolution of the fundamental problems of Philippine 
society that have spawned widespread social unrest. One that 
would take into consideration the issues that presently confront 
women, children, the environment and the indigenous peoples.

May Primera is a journalist from the Philippines, now based 
in Toronto.

** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **

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