Manila: Two senior Philippine priests have urged both communist guerrillas and the military to leave the areas they occupy inside indigenous peoples territories.
In recent months, there has been a rash of killings and involuntary displacements of the Lumad people.
Archbishops Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila and Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato said these areas should be declared as “zones of peace”.
“What happened to our indigenous brothers and sisters in Mindanao is sad and worrisome … Some of them have been killed. Many were forced to flee and abandon their homes and ancestral lands,” Tagle said in an appeal to New Peoples Army (NPA) guerrillas and government soldiers to abandon the areas they occupy so that there would be peace.
Tagle read the statement on Wednesday at the Liwasang (Plaza) Bonifacio in Manila, where a group of Lumads or indigenous peoples from Mindanao, had been camping out for several days to draw action from authorities on their plight.
The killings involved Lumads from different tribal and political loyalties who had been used by both the NPA and the military for their own purposes.
With limited education and steeped in poverty, Lumads are being easily recruited into military-backed militias and the NPA.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacieda recently said at least three in every five NPAs come from the Lumad community.
“We also appeal to the military and the National Democratic Front (the umbrella organisation were the NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines are part of) to make these indigenous communities as peace zones,” Tagle said.
Tagle’s appeal follows up from that made by Cotabato Cardinal Orlando Quevedo last week.
“When the NPA go to their communities, they either recruit or train and so forth. And the military goes in to prevent NPA of doing that, so the Lumads are caught in the crossfire of this ideological conflict,” Quevedo said.
Quevedo called on the Lumads to also discern their situation for themselves.
“I hope that our Lumads will realise that they have to discern for themselves … that they have to look at their situation and to find out who is taking advantage of them,” he said.
Tagle said it is important that justice would prevail and all those behind the killings will be prosecuted.
He said both sides should sort out the situation and find a solution to a problem that are resulting to the loss of lives of lumads.
Earlier, in September, the justice department said it will conduct an in depth investigation into abuses committed against lumads in a bid to stop the transgressions.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said the government “views with deep concern acts of aggression perpetrated against the Lumads of Eastern and Northern Mindanao.”
