Blood of slain Lumad youth by CAFGU is on Duterte’s hand

By SANDUGO
September 6, 2017

QUEZON CITY – Lumad youth Obillo Bay-ao, 19, died 9:26 p.m. September 5, after eight hours of fighting for his life at the Davao Regional Hospital in Tagum City. Bay-ao was shot dead by a certain Ben Salangani, a member of the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU), a paramilitary group. He was a grade six pupil of Salugpongan Ta 'Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center (STTICLC) in Sitio Dulyan, Brgy. Palma Gil, Talaingod, Davao Del Norte.

“We mark Obillo Bay-ao’s death with rage! It is another testimony to the mounting crimes of the US-Duterte regime against the national minorities,” said Datu Jerome Succor Aba, chairperson of Suara Bangsamoro and co-chairperson of Sandugo.

Sandugo called for the punishment of Bay-ao’s killer and the disbandment of the notorious paramilitary group even as it holds the US-Duterte regime accountable for the escalation of attacks against the national minorities as part of its all-out war and counterinsurgency policies and martial law declaration.

The national minorities – the Moro and indigenous peoples – are the hardest hit by Duterte’s martial law and all-out war. “Our people are being killed, harassed, and almost wiped out by state attacks.” There are at least 29 documented victims of extrajudicial killings among the national minorities from June 2016 to June 2017, excluding those killed in the Marawi siege.

Yesterday, the Sandugo second assembly indicted the US-Duterte for the intensifying fascist attacks against the national minorities and the worsening landgrab and plunder of resources in ancestral lands and territories, which may now lead to ethnocide.

“The President – who earlier recognized and promised to correct the hundreds of years of injustice against the national minorities – now embodies national oppression, which has caused the injustices to and oppression of the national minorities,” the declaration stated.