ISTAMBAY SA MINDANAO

The Bukidnon tribe is seeking endorsement from the city government of Malaybalay for its Daraghuyan ancestral domain claim over at least 4,700 hectares inside the Mt. Kitanglad Range and Natural Park. Bae Inatlawan Adelina Tarino, head claimant, said the city government’s endorsement is the last requirement for the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to process their application.

“We hope you will help us in this requirement, which is the last document we need for the application,” Tarino’s September 23 letter to Mayor Florencio Flores, said. Tarino’s letter was written in Cebuano.

Flores endorsed the request to the city council on the same day. The legislators have calendared it for October 7, Tarino said, adding Councilor Manuel Dinlayan, the council’s committee on indigenous people’s chair, assured here it will be tackled this week.

She noted the tribe’s great difficulty in acquiring an endorsement from the barangay government in Dalwangan village, where the tribe is based.  Read full story here.

It was a routine surf for news from places where I used to live. The order is always from the latest city, then backwards. So it was from Davao, then Quezon City-Antipolo, Iloilo, and then Cagayan de Oro.

But I was stuck in cyber Iloilo, particularly at Sun Star Iloilo’s website.

The headline reads like this as of 9:55p.m. of September 17: Police prepare transfer of ‘bad’ cops to Mindanao.

Bad cops to Mindanao? Our Mindanao is the country’s dump site? Read the rest of this entry »

Waking up to a broadcaster howling against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front one morning, I was tempted to turn the radio off.

The grain of his voice has pestered me in my space in that corner of the house.

“Maayo ng girahon sila kay gusto man diay nila og Independence!” Gusto pa gyod nila iapil ang tibuok Bukidnon aron mohimo sila og regional government!” (It’s good to go to war with them since they wanted independence. They also like to cover the whole Bukidnon in a bid to form a regional government!).

I was really forced to get on my feet even if I only had three hours of sleep yet and dialed the radio station. Read the rest of this entry »

“Iitsa, tamoka, yataki, tumbi!”  ”Iitsa, tamoka,
yataki, tumbi!”

Iitsa, tamoka, yataki, tumbi! (That’s throw, catch, step and stamp!)

I thought for a while it was a line in a Kenyan song I learned from
someplace else, but the words sounded familiar even if it was belted
out in a universal beat.

Waway Saway’s song lingered in my hearing perimeter even hours after
watching a video on it, which he posted at Youtube.com.

The song was about care for the environment in which the singer urged
the listeners to throw, catch, step and stamp on one’s fear against
caring for the environment.

The video showed Gali (”fellow” or Binukid equivalent to Cebuano’s
“Bai”) perform in an international audience with fellow Talaandig
artist Balugto Necosia in a peace concert in South Korea’s tourist
favorite Naminara Island. Read the rest of this entry »

Justice delayed is justice denied and in Bukidnon, whose courts are swamped with cases, resetting a trial today would likely mean waiting for 2010, an official of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines has warned.
Anastacio Rosos, IBP Bukidnon chapter president, said the problem has hampered the speedy dispensation of justice in the province’s four regional trial courts.

He said the lack of judges caused each of the four courts to have a load of at least 1,000 cases, affecting specially the hearing of criminal cases. Read full report here.

He said one indicator is that the courts’ schedules had been filled up, that cases

to be reset for hearing could be scheduled in 2010.

Rosos said IBP found the whole year of 2009 is filled with court hearings. He said they have started plotting out schedules for 2010.

That Bukidnon is a peaceful province is now a myth.

One cannot play blind to the kind of stories we hear from both the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the New Peoples Army about gaining strength against each other.

Both camps, even with disproportionate advantages, have brought the battlefield from the mountains to the media.

The news room has become a fierce war zone of propaganda. Read the rest of this entry »

For the ninth time this year, the Bishops-Ulama Conference has held on to the ground by leading the celebrations for the Mindanao Week of Peace (MWOP).

The BUC adopted Zamboanga City’s Peace Week and made it Mindanao-wide in 1999.

For almost a decade, the peace weeks have been opportunities for “peace weavers” to reflect on the need for peace in Mindanao, every stakeholder’s role and what has been done to attain lasting peace. Read the rest of this entry »

Those who are familiar with peace negotiations could understand the nature of talks being held there. Important but confidential, these are only two of the important considerations.

Any point being brought up or agreed upon bears impact to people —the respective constituencies of each negotiating party.

In the case of the government negotiating peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, each peace panel was entrusted with their stands on major talking points.

But major stands on the talking points may have to be brought open for consensus, if not compromise in the negotiating table — a market place of options. A major stand have to stand some modifications, which require consultations with their constituencies or what they call in the GRP-MILF peace panels as their “principals.”

All these come in the limelight now as both panels signal optimism for an upcoming return to formal talks early next year—well, after breaking from more than a year of impasse on ancestral domain issues. Read the rest of this entry »

Compostela Valley board member Neri Barte is now facing charges of serious physical injuries, grave coercion, grave threats, serious misconduct and grave abuse of authority for allegedly attacking a Radyo Natin broadcaster right inside the announcer’s booth as the latter was on air.

Natin broadcaster Roel Sembrano filed the complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman in Mindanao in the presence of his colleagues from the tri-media.

Sembrano recounted to reporters his encounter with Barte on Oct. 24 at the announcer’s booth.

He said he was on his daily morning program, Haring Lungsod Ikaw and Nasayod, when Barte, with his wife and daughter, barged into the announcer’s booth and mauled him, even drawing out a gun and pointed it towards him. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Armed Forces Chief of  Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon and Philippine National Police chief Avelino Razon and three other military officials are respondents in the first petition for writ of amparo in Mindanao.

The petition was filed by Bebelita Bustamante of Paquibato district, whose only son, 21-year old Luicito, disappeared on October 27.

The other respondents are Major General Ernesto Boa of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division based in Davao City; Lt. Col. Alexander Ambal, chief of the division’s 73rd infantry batallion in Sto. Thomas, Davao del Norte, Col. Allan Luga, commander of Task Force Davao, a certain Noli Obat and seven  John Does, or unidentified respondents.

The Karapatan human rights group, who accompanied Ms Bustamante at the Hall of Justice, said her son was reportedly taken by elements of Task Force Davao. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

Any time, any day.

Chief Justice Reynato Puno wants the public to know that any time or any day, relatives of missing persons can petition the judge for a writ of amparo, a measure intended to protect the missing person from becoming a victim of extrajudicial killings or a desaparecido (disappeared or victim of enforced disappearance).

The writ is enforceable anywhere in the country.

“We don’t compromise the life of the aggrieved party just because one feels sleepy,” Puno told members of the local judiciary, prosecutors, lawyers, the military and police officials, human rights groups and representatives from civil society at a forum at the University of Mindanao late Tuesday. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

The City Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday urging the creation of at least a Shari’ah circuit and district court court here.  The resolution was sponsored by Councilor Amilbangsa Manding, President of the Association of Barangay Councils, to help free the regular courts of cases involving Muslims.

Estimated at around 150,000, Muslims here constitute 10% of the Davao City’s 1.4 million population. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.