DECLARATION:| Taking the Law into the People’s Hands: Declaration of the Mindanao People’s Legislative and Policy Agenda for Human Rights and Peace

Posted by Belarmino Dabalos Saguing

Rome, Italy September 27. 2014 

DECLARATION: Mindanao Human Rights and Peace Conference 2014

Declaration of the Mindanao People’s

Legislative and Policy Agenda for Human Rights and Peace

We, delegates to the Mindanao Human Rights and Peace Conference, hereby declare our strong opposition to IMPERIALIST PLUNDER AND MILITARIZATION IN MINDANAO.

We declare our condemnation of and resistance to the anti-human rights, anti-peace, and anti-people OPLAN BAYANIHAN of the Aquino Government.

After sharing on our experiences of facing trumped up charges, illegal arrests and detention, internal displacements, torture and enforced disappearances, attacks and encampments on schools, hamletting, and other forms of human rights violations, we resolve to seek accountability from a government that has further engendered the culture of impunity in Mindanao and the whole country.

The BS Aquino Regime is responsible for the 83 extrajudicial killings of Mindanawon activists, indigenous, environmental, and community leaders; the 508 individuals filed with 608 trumped up charges all over Mindanao; attacks on dozens of community schools affecting thousands of indigenous children; and the displacement of 200,000 individuals all over Mindanao.

These are the direct results of his deployment of around 50% of the combat forces of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Mindanao--- 4 Infantry Divisions and 45 Infantry Battalions--- which have used as added instruments more than 20 indigenous paramilitaries and warlord armies, to sow fear, terror, and domination over urban and rural communities.

Instead of taking the path to peace by resuming the GPH-NDFP peace talks and seeking to resolve the roots of armed conflict, this government has obsessed itself with war. It has militarized civilian functions like rural education and alternative learning systems, relief and disaster response, and conditional cash transfer schemes, using them for counterinsurgency purposes. 

But the people of Mindanao are courageously resisting the state terrorism of the BS Aquino Regime.

Indigenous communities, peasants, the Moro people, and other basic sectors are resisting landgrabbing of ancestral domains by mining companies, notably of TVI in Bayog, Zamboanga del Sur, Xstrata mining in SOSCSKARGEN, Apex Mining and Agusan Petroleum in Compostela Valley, Taganito mining in Caraga, by agribusiness plantations in Northern and Southern Mindanao, and the natural gas and oil in Liguasan Marsh and the Sulu Sea.

1.       Strategic Lawsuits Against People’s Participation (SLAPP)

·         Enact the Anti-SLAPP Bill; empower the people to SLAPPback NOW!

·    Raise the standards for investigations and resolutions and the strictest adherence to due process concerning charges against human rights defenders and ordinary individuals at the level of the Department of Justice

·       Prohibit the establishment of government mechanisms for SLAPP and political repression such as the Inter-agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), now resurrected by Oplan Bayanihan

2.       Attacks on Schools

·        Prosecute state security forces using schools and communities as encampments, violating prohibitions within their vicinity, and tagging teachers and students as ‘rebels’

·        Scrap Department of Education Order No. 221 and AFP Letter Directive 25 which allows the militarization of the educational system

3.       Indigenous Paramilitarism and Warlordism

·        Disband all the indigenous paramilitaries and private armies such as Alamara, Black Fighter, Mapando, Bagani, Laplap, NIPAR, Wild Dogs, BULIF, BIN, Black Shirt, K9, SCAA, Blue Guards, and Kalpet which are reportedly aided, funded, and controlled by the AFP, PNP and other state security forces, and by modern warlords and political dynasties

·         Disband all private armies of mining companies and other extractive industries

4.       Miitarization and Internal Displacement

·         Pull out all military troops from peasant and indigenous communities

·         Prosecute state security forces engaged in the political repression of trade unions, urban poor communities, schools, and other sectors

We call on Congress to investigate these atrocities being suffered by grassroots communities and leaders.

We also make our resounding call for the resumption of the GPH-NDFP peace talks to advance the Mindanao People’s Peace Agenda, to address violations of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) and all previously-signed agreements, and to move forward with the agenda for Comprehensive Social and Economic Reforms (CASER).

But we realize that these legislative and policy agenda for human rights and peace will not be effective without a militant and strong people’s movement that will enact these proposals and actions through the parliament of the streets. Knowing that the poor are on the fringes of the legislative and policy-making processes, we “take the law into the people’s hands” by pushing for the above agenda as concrete proposals for policy reforms, as discussion points for the peace process, and as rallying calls in schools, communities, and workplaces.

Thus, this conference declares the following actions, in addition to our current efforts in our communities and regions:

1.      We will stage another Manilakbayan ng Mindanao to expose and oppose Oplan Bayanihan in the national capital region and bring our protest before Malacanang

2.     We will hold the commemoration of the D’yandi Peace Pact among indigenous leaders in Mindanao to declare opposition to mining and militarization in ancestral domains

3.      We will conduct an International People’s Tribunal against Imperialist Plunder to bring our voices to the international community

This we declare today, as the Mindanao Human Rights Parliament culminates our Mindanao Human Rights and Peace Conference held from Sept 18-20, 2014.

Signed by 144 delegates this 20^th of September, 2014 at the Homitori, Davao City, Philippines.