‘Bring Lumads home for Christmas.’
This was the theme of the Christmas gift-giving activity of various Metro Manila-based youth peace and green groups dubbed as ‘Paskuhang Bakwit,’ held on December 20 at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Stud Farm in Quezon City.
Led by Kalinaw Youth Network, Manila Youth Act Now, Save Our Schools Network, Sining Laya and Nilad, students from different schools in Metro Manila conducted a day-long activity for Lumad students who have been in a protest camp for almost six months in UP.
More than a hundred Lumad children evacuated to UP after their communities experienced to intensified militarization, aerial bombings, threats from the president himself to bomb their schools due to the extended martial law in the entire island of Mindanao.
Organizers of the Paskuhang Bakwit also said that these Lumad students fear for their lives as state forces continue the killings, food blockades and air strikes in their indigenous communities.
In order for the Lumad to go back home to their indigenous lands, the groups said that part of the ‘bakwit wish list’ for Christmas is ending martial law, militarization and other anti-people policies of the Duterte administration against them.
“Militarization has caused Lumad communities to evacuate and seek refuge to safer places. Martial law in Mindanao has brought nothing but terror for the people in the countryside. And now that its implementation has been extended until the end of 2018, the Lumads have nothing to hold on to but their struggle for land and life,” said Bridgette Quinto, spokesperson of Paskuhang Paslit and president of Manila Youth Act Now.
Attacks on Lumad
Organizers decried the continuing attacks of Duterte’s Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) against indigenous groups in Mindanao, particularly the ongoing food blockade in Surigao del Sur which they said “has been starving Lumad evacuees in the area.”
Quinto insisted, “This yuletide season, the AFP is starving bakwits and is currently preventing organizations to bring in food to Lumad evacuees. Even attempts by the local government to bring food were blocked, organizations seeking to provide relief operations have also been consistently prohibited from entering the area, thus forcing the bakwits to live in a dismal state with the little food they have left.”
Also since the implementation of martial law in the whole island, at least 90 cases of extrajudicial killings, 430 cases of trumped up charges and forcible evacuation of thousands of Lumad and Moro communities have been reported by human rights group in Mindanao.
Originally, the Paskuhang Bakwit is designed for Metro Manila youth and students to visit Lumad communities in Mindanao in communities in various provinces of Mindanao. But the organizers called off the due to current safety and security concerns while Martial Law is existing and is now extended up to the end of 2018.
Quinto added that their groups are set to hold another bakwit gift-giving event in Mindanao during the summer.
