RESIST BS AQUINO’S ATTACK ON SCHOOLS, COMMUNITIES AND THE PEOPLE!
As Aquino’s term ends in less than a year, gross human rights abuses against lumads, peasants, environmentalists, human rights defenders and church people continue to escalate in Mindanao. These human rights abuses glaringly persist in the ancestral domains where the big and foreign mining companies and agri-plantations operate.
To facilitate the plunder of our resources, the Aquino government aggressively employing the vicious state’s internal security doctrine OPLAN BAYANIHAN to attack the schools, communities and the people especially those who actively resist.
At least 71 Indigenous leaders killed under Aquino’s term, 56 are lumads of which 12 Blaans killed in the mining site of Sagittarius Mines Inc.- Glencore Xstrata. Furthermore, 87 Indigenous Lumad Schools in Mindanao are suffering from various forms of military attacks while 233 documented cases of human rights violations perpetrated against children. Also, 9 out of 10 Lumad Children have no access to formal schooling. And 144 indigenous people, environmental defenders and human rights activists in Mindanao have been victims of Extra-Judicial Killings, over 250 leaders of communities and people’s organizations are facing false criminal charges to silence their advocacies, more than 40,000 Lumads have been forcibly displaced from ancestral domains due to militarization, over 20 paramilitary groups are unleashed by the AFP to sow division and terror in Lumad communities. Moreover, 56% combat forces of the AFP have been deployed to Mindanao while more than 500,000 hectares of Mindanao lands are covered by mining concessions and more than 700,000 hectares of Mindanao lands are covered by banana, pineapple, oil palm, rubber and other plantations.
Thus, a regional Lakbayan (People’s March and Caravan) dubbed as LAKBAYAN 6: RESIST IMPERIALIST PLUNDER, STOP LUMAD KILLINGS will be held on December 8-10, 2015 from Digos City to Koronadal City. Around 3,000 people from church people, peasants, workers, Indigenous People, women, youth and students, environmentalists and teachers among other sectors will participate.
