Several days after the memorandum of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) tagging Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and COURAGE as communist fronts was exposed, the military and police arrested another progressive leader in Caraga region on March 17.
Five activists were killed and at least three others were arrested in what appeared to be government crackdown on progressives in Southern Luzon early this morning, March 7.
Lawyers and lumad advocates slammed the Philippine National Police for keeping a Bakwit School teacher away from family and lawyers in the past days.
A group of Manobo evacuees seeking refuge inside the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Haran compound decried on the repeated accusations of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that ‘’bakwit schools’ train child warriors and earn profit from taking shelter in the cities to expose their plight in the communities they temporarily left behind.
Datu Benito Bay-ao was one of the Lumad leaders who were taken into custody after that disgraceful raid at the Bakwit School in Cebu City. Just six years ago, Dats Bens (as we call him) spoke with pride and optimism in this documentary about their Lumad school in their village of Dulyan, and across the other upland villages in the Pantaron under the Salugpongan Ta Tanu Igkanugon organization. Schooling in the cities made them ashamed of, and forget about, being a Lumad, he said. But with their schools built right in their domain, young Lumad could learn while keeping their tradition alive.
A Lumad student in a Bakwit School in UP Diliman had this response to the recent pronouncement of the Philippine National Police Region 7 that their schools are “training grounds for child warriors.”
Police and social workers in Cebu on Monday took custody of 21 Lumad students and arrested tribal elders and school teachers from their “Bakwit School” in the University of San Carlos Talamban campus, claiming this was a “rescue” from a rebel training school.
The University of the Philippines Mindanao’s Student Council urged its administration to defend its constituents following recent red-tagging incidents against members of the university’s community.
Student groups in Mindanao urged the government to recalibrate its strategies to end the armed conflict through resolving the root causes of armed rebellion: poverty, inequality, corruption, and atrocious governance, instead of sowing fear against dissent.
Former presidents of the Davao City chapter of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) issued a statement criticizing the Duterte administration’s counter-insurgency has been reduced to red-tagging of activists, critics and fellow lawyers.
