“We will not stop until justice is served. We have done nothing wrong. Their accusations bear no truth and we will continue to challenge it and push for any legal remedies available to us.”
MANILA – More than 210 Lumad schools have been forcibly closed since then president Rodrigo Duterte ordered them shut down. Not a single school has been allowed to operate and now, they are coming for the activists who rescued Lumad students and volunteer teachers in distress.
The Court of Appeals (CA) – Cagayan de Oro recently upheld the decision of Tagum City Regional Trial Court Branch 7, convicting the humanitarian workers collectively known as “Talaingod 13” of “other forms of child abuse”.
“We have to bring out the narrative: the Lumad communities suffered incessant bombing, hamleting, and some were killed. Their schools forcibly closed and paramilitary groups swarmed to threaten them,” said Beverly Longid, national convener of indigenous group Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (Katribu), in a press conference on December 19.
The case stemmed from a November 2018 solidarity mission to bring food and other essentials to Lumad students of the Salugpongan Ta’Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center Inc. (STTICLC) and the Community Technical College of Southeastern Mindanao (CTCSM) in the hinterlands of Talaingod, Davao del Norte.
The police claimed that the mission was not coordinated with the authorities and that members of the mission were kidnapping students and teachers they fetched in the night.
But the Talaingod 13 and indigenous peoples rights groups denied the accusations, saying the mission was properly coordinated with the local authorities.
“This is unacceptable. This is heavy on my part as a teacher,” said former ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro in Filipino. “The Lumad students and volunteer teachers were harassed, suffered from food blockade, and even to the point they had to look for sanctuary. It is an utmost priority that time to rescue them.”
The national solidarity mission was based on the invitation by the Save Our Schools Network. The group requested rescue of the militarized Lumad communities in Talaingod, who were facing imminent threats to their life from the hands of paramilitary group Alamara.
Angelika Moral, a rescued Lumad student, belied the charges filed against the humanitarian workers during the launching of Defend Talaingod 13. “They helped us. We were not forced to join them. In fact, they are our second parents. They are the ones who took care of us, when our parents are not around,” she said in Filipino.
In tears, Moral narrated what happened that day: “Since the military forced us to leave, we had to walk for three hours just to reach the highway. The trail was dark, slippery, and steep. When we reached the highway, we saw the rescue team.”
Read: Rescued Lumad youth debunks kidnapping, child-abuse raps against Talaingod 13
“It is our protocol to conduct a courtesy visit to the city mayor , municipal governor, and the local officials. But during that time, not one of them was available,” said former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, also part of the national solidarity mission.
“I even talked to Bong Go that time, who was then the special aide of the president. But they all refused to respond to us.”
All of Mindanao was under martial law when the humanitarian mission was done. The whole region was placed under military control for more than two years from May 23, 2017 up to December 31, 2019.
The failure of laws to protect
Both mission responders and the Lumad people should have been guaranteed protection under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or also known as the rules of war, since they are all civilians.
Not only is the Philippines a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, rendering them accountable for IHL violations, but it also has a domestic law that criminalizes such act under the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity.
“Despite the Philippines being a signatory of the convention, there is a pattern of abuses that we have been seeing. We have seen disrespect and non-compliance of the Philippine state. It is alarming,” said Kabataan Party-list Rep. Renee Co.
Co, together with Gabriela Party-list Rep. Sarah Elago and ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio, filed a House resolution to conduct a probe on the potential IHL violations in the country last August, with the objective to assess its effectiveness.
“We have seen that this law has no strength against the violators,” Co added. “The threats from Alamara (paramilitary) was an imminent danger during the context of the mission.”
Beyond the IHL, Longid said that the attacks against Talaingod 13 and the Lumad communities also violate the international human rights instruments. One, for example, is the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
“The declaration actually prohibits forced evacuation, forced surrenders, and forced recruitment to both the military and the paramilitary. It also has a very strict provision on free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) not only on projects but also in other activities that affect the indigenous peoples, including militarization,” Longid said.
Article 8 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples stipulates the right of indigenous peoples to not be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
It also delineates the obligation of the state to prevent any action aimed at depriving them of their integrity, land and territories, and forced population transfer.
Dispossession in education
The establishment of the Lumad schools is a by-product of the indigenous people’s assertion of their right to self-determination in education.
“The Lumad schools have a special framework. These had been established due to the absence of basic social services, including education, to the Lumad communities,” said Rev. Mario Balawag of United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). “It goes beyond providing education for the Lumad children but also to their parents.”
Lumad schools paved the way for a specialized community-based learning about agriculture and self-sufficient farming, general academics and health, collective right to self-determination, and environmental protection – a distinct program in contrast to the normative education in the Philippines.
“But how can the children and parents study in the context of armed conflict? Instead of being surrounded by papers, they were surrounded by guns (from military and paramilitary elements),” Balawag added.
While it was Duterte who ordered the Lumad schools shut down, not one has been permitted to operate during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
“Some schools were completely destroyed,” Longid said. “The rate of militarization has not decreased. In fact, the budget for counter-insurgency increased.”
Human rights group Karapatan flagged the proposed P8-billion budget for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), citing a more than 300-percent increase from its 2025 allocation. Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said that the agency is a state terror machine: “Not only a waste of the people’s money, but money used to fund repression.”
Read: Groups renew call to abolish NTF-ELCAC, junk confidential funds
“The NTF-ELCAC is one of the leading agencies behind the attacks against the human rights activists under the so-called whole of the nation approach of the counter-insurgency,” said Liza Maza, president of Makabayan coalition and former representative of Bayan Muna and Gabriela Party-list.
In the previous years, the Lumad schools were targeted by the NTF-ELCAC, associating them with terrorism and extending the political vilification to news outfits covering the plight of the Lumad people, including Bulatlat.
Maza added that more than 10,000 Lumad students were impacted by the forced closure of their schools. The counter-insurgency program also continues under the National Action Plan for Unity Peace and Development covering 2025 to 2028.
“We will not stop until justice is served. We have done nothing wrong. Their accusations bear no truth and we will continue to challenge it and push for any legal remedies available to us,” said Castro.Beyond the courts, the Defend Talaingod 13 Network vows to continue campaigning for the humanitarian mission workers and the Lumad communities in the Philippines. (JDS)
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