The February 15, 2021 police raid of the Lumad Bakwit School in the SVD University of San Carlos Talamban Campus-Cebu in the guise of rescue operation is a blatant violation of the right to education and the right to self-determination of indigenous children and youth. The Council of Bishops condemns this atrocious act by the Police Regional Office -7 and the involved state security forces. The allegations that the Lumad Bakwit Schools or the Indigenous Evacuee School is a training ground of the guerilla New People’s Army are untenable.
Month: February 2021
STATEMENT ON MASSACRE OF TUMANDUK IN PANAY ISLAND
The UCCP Council of Bishops strongly condemns the recent killings of nine (9) Tumanduk barangay leaders in Calinog, Iloilo and the abduction of their seventeen (17) leaders in Tapaz, Capiz, on December 30. 2020. The massacre and arrests are heinous crimes against the individual and collective life of the Tumanduk. These acts have been well-planned by the military and police operatives under the intensified counterinsurgency program funded by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
WOE TO THOSE WHO MAKE UNJUST LAWS, AND ISSUE OPPRESSIVE DECREES
The Anti-Terrorism Law is no less than a vicious act of power grab passed under the pretext of national security amid the coronavirus pandemic, presenting a stern peril against Philippine democracy. Replacing the Human Security Act of 2007. The new law criminalizes an abstruse new offense: the incitement of terrorism “by means of speeches, proclamations, writings, emblems, banners or other representations without taking any direct part in the commission of terrorism.” Section 29 authorizes law enforcement to arrest and detain, without a warrant and for fourteen to twenty-four days, anyone suspected of any terrorism offense including those accused of incitement.