‘Disarm all miners within three days’

DAVAO CITY — Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte ordered elements of Task Force Monkayo to disarm within three days all miners operating at the gold-rush site at Mt. Diwalwal in Monkayo, Compostela Valley.

Duterte’s order also includes Monkayo Mayor Joel Brilliantes.

Duterte, in his capacity as chairman of the Southern Mindanao Regional Peace and Order Council, was tasked by President Arroyo to find a solution to the decades-old conflict at the mining site.

Trouble emerged anew at the mining site after Brilliantes enforced last July 10 his earlier order stopping all mining operations there. The court lifted the temporary restraining order against the move three days earlier.

The President, according to Duterte, instructed that everyone at the mining site be disarmed until she issues, possibly on Thursday, a proclamation aimed at resolving the Diwalwal conflict.

Duterte warned that should the miners fail to resolve the issue among themselves, he would recommend that Diwalwal be closed for mining and for existing tunnels there to be blown up to settle the dispute once and for all.

"Avoid greed and maybe, we can help you. You keep on shooting everybody and I will condemn all the tunnels," he said.

Thousands of people have reportedly been killed since the conflict erupted in 1983.

Duterte met with representatives of the small-scale Diwalwal miners and local military and police officials in a visit to the gold-rush site last Sunday.

"The government is not earning anything from Mt. Diwalwal because the mining operations have not been legalized yet. The earnings in the mining site have reached billions of pesos and the government is not getting even 20 percent of them," he said.

The small-scale miners and a multinational firm, Southeast Mining Corp. (SEM), are still locked in a legal battle pending with the Supreme Court.

SEM has disputed the miners’ claim over 729 hectares of the 4,999 hectares it is claiming.

The contested 729-hectare area is said to be the most productive with huge quantities of high-quality gold ore.