Congress body probes killings of non-Moro leaders in Mindanao
BAGUIO CITY—A pattern of murders affecting non-Moro indigenous peoples (IPs) in Mindanao is now being investigated—and hopefully resolved—through a task force initiated by Congress, the chair of the House committee on indigenous cultural communities and indigenous peoples said here on Tuesday.
More than a hundred killings in Mindanao have been documented by law enforcers, and the initial culprits appeared to be fellow indigenous Filipinos who are Muslims, with conflicts mainly rooted on land disputes, said Baguio Rep. Mauricio Domogan on the sidelines of this year’s Rizal Day commemoration here.
Domogan told the Inquirer that the committee facilitated the creation of a presidential task force composed of the military, the police, and the government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which has officially acknowledged that IP murders have taken place in its territory.
“Muslim leaders have been cooperating with the national government in defusing tensions over ancestral lands in Mindanao,” said the lawmaker, who is also a Baguio-based IP.
Early in December, Domogan held a hearing on the IP murders, which lawyer Benedicto Bacani, executive director of the think tank Institute of Autonomy and Governance, said has veered toward “genocide” because the killings have been “systematic.”
The hearing led to the passage of a House resolution seeking the creation of the task force, he added.
While the task force will undertake fact-finding missions to untangle overlapping land claims over ancestral domains—vast lands communally owned by clans or tribes—its key function would be to immediately restore peace and order in conflict areas, Domogan said.
Mindanao IPs have volunteered to help bridge the task force’s peacekeeping agenda and the local governments within the BARMM, among them the non-Moro Teduray-Lambangian tribe, he said.
Ancestral domain
The Teduray-Lambangian were promised a certificate of ancestral domain title over 208,258 hectares of domain land by June next year. The domain encompasses 14,000 lakes and rivers, eight municipalities in Maguindanao del Sur, a portion of Maguindanao del Norte, and six villages in the town of Lebak in Sultan Kudarat.
The murders were last discussed at a committee hearing in the first week of December, said Bacani during a Dec. 11 Cordillera stakeholders’ conference on fiscal autonomy in Baguio.
In outlining the process of transferring power to the BARMM, he revealed that “what had been most worrisome for us was the fate of non-Moro indigenous people.”
“Around 103 leaders of non-Moro IPs have been killed since the signing of the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which led to the 2018 law creating the BARMM that replaced the original Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM),” Bacani said.
“Sila kasi ang pinaka-minority (The non-Moro IPs are considered the primary minority group within the actual minority sector in the BARMM). Some Moro IPs have claimed ancestral domains, and violence has been inflicted on the non-Moro IPs,” he said at the forum.
Generally, the Bangsamoro agreement not only ended hostilities between the MILF and the national government but also established peace between the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which previously governed the ARMM. The MILF broke away from the MNLF in 1984, he said.
However, cases of “rido” (clan violence) and political killings continue to fester in the new autonomous region, Bacani said.
