Police brutality and
military terror trademark of P-Noy's Oplan Bayanihan – Karapatan
By KARAPATAN
April
24, 2012
QUEZON CITY – Genasque Enriquez, a Manobo leader from Surigao del Sur expressed
sympathy, in behalf of internal refugees or bakwet from Visayas and
Mindanao who are in
Manila, with the urban
poor victims of police brutality in yesterday’s demolition at the
Silverio Compound in Sucat, Paranaque.
The bakwet find strong
affinity with the residents of Silverio compound as they likened the
urban poor situation to the situation of the bakwet. “Here in the
urban centers, there is forced eviction of urban poor dwellers in
favour of ‘development’; while there is forced evacuation in the
countryside, also in the name of ‘development’. Theirs is for
commercial purposes for P-Noy’s public-private partnership (PPP); ours
is for agri-business plantations and large-scale mining operations.
Theirs is police brutality, ours is military combat operations,” said
Enriquez, secretary general of Kahugpong sa Lumadnong Organisasyon (KASALO),
a CARAGA-wide organization of Lumad. Enriquez attended, along with 130
others, the conference on Internally Displaced People or internal
refugees held in Quezon City.
Karapatan chairperson
Marie Hilao-Enriquez also said that, “The everyday life of the
ordinary Filipino is hard enough with the unabated high prices of
basic commodities and oil, the low wages, the endless demolition and
the resulting displacement of urban poor dwellers; the life of
internal refugees is doubly hard. It is unimaginable to most Filipinos
how it is to be uprooted from the community that is your home from
birth.”
Genasque Enriquez
added that, “yearly, we are forced to leave our communities, our farms
that are ready for harvest; our children had to stop schooling, only
to seek shelter in unfamiliar places, sleep in cold cemented floors in
gyms, basketball courts or school halls, bear the sweltering heat of
makeshift tents; and rely on donated food and medicine. When we go
back to our communities all our efforts to build and develop our
communities and to secure our children’s future are destroyed. Our
harvested crops are thrown out on the roads, our houses and the
schools we built are ransacked and vandalized. We are endlessly
building and rebuilding our lives amidst the turmoil created by
military presence and activities in their lands. Worst, we are treated
like dirt by some government and military officials who are sworn to
protect our rights as human beings.”
Karapatan has
documented more than 6,500 victims of combined forced eviction and
forced evacuation from the time P-Noy assumed the Presidency until the
first quarter of 2012. According to Marie Hilao-Enriquez, “this number
does not include those who were harassed and intimidated; those who
were wounded and hit by bomb shrapnel or by the military’s
indiscriminate firing, or the number of people, including minor, who
were used as guide in navigating the forest areas, or shield by the
military during their operations and the number of schools and other
public places which the military used for their purpose.”
Victims of forced
evacuation and rights groups also called on the P-Noy government to
stop military operations, bombings and airstrikes in the countryside
and to immediately pull out military troops, especially in peasant
communities and ancestral lands of Moro and indigenous peoples. The
delegates of the conference on Internally Displaced People yesterday
lit candles along E. Rodriguez Ave. in Quezon City to show their
sympathy with the residents of Silverio Compound and express their
protest over the reported death of four protesters, scores of wounded
and the arrest of at least 33 others.