Expose the NTF-ELCAC for its Attacks on Lumad Communities
As part of Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Peasant Month, Kabataan Alliance & Anakbayan-USA denounce the Duterte regime’s attacks on indigenous communities through the military and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), including the recent threats to Bai Bibyaon and the smear campaign against the Save Our Schools (SOS) Network!
Under Duterte, the Lumad continue to face constant state violence and repression as they fight to protect their ancestral land from the plunder and environmental destruction caused by foreign mining and logging corporations. Almost all of the 210 community-built Lumad schools, an expression of the Lumad communities’ struggle for self-determination, have been forcibly shut down since Duterte took office.
The NTF-ELCAC, formed by Duterte’s Executive Order 70 (EO70) in 2018, utilizes the whole-of-nation approach to weaponize the entire civilian bureaucracy towards counter-insurgency. Many times working with the police & military in red-tagging activists, killing human rights defenders, waging psychological warfare, and ultimately harming the democratic mass movement. Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. & Lorraine Badoy, spokespersons of the NTF, have made countless accusations on Lumad organizations, discrediting their work and further inciting violence on their communities.
Among the NTF’s regular harassment of the Lumads include constant red-tagging, orchestrating raids on schools, filing trumped-up charges against Lumad teachers, students, and leaders, and massacring Lumad farmers. They even go so far as to force the Lumad people to destroy their own schools, threatening them with arrest if they fail to cooperate. As a further means of psychological warfare, the NTF incentivizes and forces innocent Lumads to pose as rebel surrenderees in exchange for aid and livelihood support. All this to build on the NTF’s illusion of successful counterinsurgency, where in reality Lumads are coerced due to military occupation, fear, and poverty.
These targeted, systematic, and relentless attacks on Lumad communities, are calculated attempts to divide the people’s support of those who have been impacted by the militarization, displacement and plunder of their ancestral lands.
We are appalled by the recent sham press conferences organized by the military’s 10th Infantry Division and the NTF, whose claims have been disproven in the past and contradict the very testimonies, narratives, and experiences that Lumad community members have shared over the past years.
All of this is happening in the midst of a global pandemic in which the NTF-ELCAC has received over 19 billion pesos in funding, while billions of pesos for COVID-19 relief have been misused and misappropriated. The attacks against the Lumad point to the absolute necessity of building back strong communities as a means of vital resistance to defend the people and their ancestral land.
Learn more and take action by joining Filipino youth and supporters of the Lumads in endorsing the Save Lumad Schools campaign! Utilize our toolkit in order to raise awareness and educate about the Lumads’ struggles, expose the NTF for their increasing attacks on the Lumads, and engage more Filipino youth and organizations to support the campaign! Sign our unity statement here!
#HandsOffBaiBibyaon
#SaveOurSchools
#SavePantaronRange
#NCIPBuwagin
#DefundNTFELCAC
#AbolishNTFELCAC
