Lumads reject offer to kill NPAs

MANILA, Philippines — A group of Moros and indigenous peoples have turned down President Duterte’s offer to recruit and train lumads to be militiamen and kill New People’s Army (NPA) rebels in exchange for money.

“This only means that the President’s soldiers with all the new equipment and overflowing funds...could not suppress the intensifying civil war, especially in Mindanao. He has to resort to bribery to gain the support of the lumads,” Jerome Succor Aba, co-chairman of Sandugo, said.

The President said he would give P20,000 for every NPA rebel that a lumad-turned-militiaman would kill.

Aba said lumads  survived not because of money but by developing the land and resources in their ancestral territories.

“Trying to divide and pit them against each other through military training and offer of money to kill is simply bastardization of their culture,” he said.

Aba said many lumad leaders were killed for rejecting offers of large amounts of money to allow private corporations into their ancestral lands.

He said the President’s offer to kill for money would embolden paramilitary groups to kill anyone they  label as NPA.               

“This will only lead to further intensification of the…resistance of the lumads and the Filipino masses,” Aba said.