DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Aug. 15, 2013) – Some 500 tribesmen had fled the province of Agusan del Sur due to reported militarization and harassment by soldiers and policemen and have sought safe refuge in Davao City.
Tribe leaders said they were treated like animals and detained by authorities for no apparent reasons.
“We don’t understand why we had to be treated worse than farm animals,” Marilyn Edgame, spokesperson for the group KASAKA, said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
Kasaka represents the 500 strong Agusanon Manobos who evacuated to Davao just recently.
Edgame said they were detained by authorities when they asked for aid from the provincial government. And with no hope and under threat, they were forced to flee their homes and sought sanctuary in Davao City. They are now temporarily housed in Bankerohan Gymnasium.
She said evacuees were victims of “ambush negotiations” by a municipal warden who would come in the middle of the night and forced the tribe leaders to sign agreements to bring back the villagers to their homes.
“They dragged one of our datus, who had difficulty in understanding because he was deaf. They forced him to sign an agreement, but we immediately intervened. The warden was furious after that,” Edgame said.
A village leader, Mako Malayon, said the warden took advantage of their inability to read and write and the little knowledge they have of the process of law.
Edgame said police forces prevented them from bringing the human rights group Karapatan into the village.
“We were barricaded by the police from coming back. We were without shelters and had to sleep on the road, with police trucks that had no plate numbers roving around us. The police held our food supply and to think that we had mothers who were still carrying their children, I would say we treat our farm animals better,” she said.
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