EDITORIAL - The new hamleting

This is not supposed to be happening in a modern state. In Bukidnon last month, five members of a Lumad family were murdered, including children aged 13 and 17. Last Sept. 1 in Surigao del Sur, the director of a Lumad school and two others were brutally killed.

Witnesses have pointed to government militias as the perpetrators, saying the victims were suspected of supporting the New People’s Army. The military has denied involvement in the operations against Lumad or indigenous communities in Mindanao. Certain groups have voiced suspicion that the tribal communities are being targeted and systematically driven out of their lands to make way for private business operations.

Since arrests have not been made and motives established, the only incontrovertible fact at this point is that several people are dead, brutally murdered by individuals who are still at large and may kill again.

Preventing more violence is just one of the reasons why the murderers must be caught. The principal reason is to render justice, the lack of which fuels insurgencies and criminality and aggravates poverty. Even as the Aquino administration denies that there is a systematic campaign to drive out indigenous people from their lands, thousands of Lumads have been displaced and are staying in temporary shelters, in what has been likened to the revival of anti-communist “hamleting” during the Marcos dictatorship.

The Lumads’ plight adds to the concerns raised even by the United Nations about human rights violations attributed to state forces under the Aquino administration. The Armed Forces of the Philippines has consistently denied accusations of involvement in extrajudicial killings of left-leaning militants. The AFP has also denied supporting paramilitary attacks against tribal communities.

As long as Lumads keep getting murdered, however, state forces will continue to be suspect. If the Aquino administration wants to dispel suspicions of sanctioning the attacks, it must intensify efforts to bring the killers to justice.