PAGADIAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Apr. 7, 2013) – Various Filipino groups working against destructive mining in the Philippines have launched a campaign dubbed as “Tao muna-Hindi Mina” to challenge political candidates to take up a 10-point Human Rights Agenda on Mining in time for the election campaign period.
The group aims to popularize the agenda online and offline using social networking sites in order to generate the broadest possible support and endorsement by different sectors at the national and local levels.
“Mining has been in the national agenda for more than a decade. The assumption into office of President Benigno Aquini gave hope for a policy change in mining. Unfortunately, government continues to aggressively promote mining as revenue-generating industry despite continued and widespread protests by mining-affected communities as well as civil society,” Jaybee Garganera, national coordinator of Alyansa Tigil Mina, said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
Emmanuel Amistad, Executive Director of the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, said as the electoral campaign period provides an opportunity to propagate the peoples’ issues and concerns on mining, human rights, and the environment, indigenous peoples and women’s groups have come together and developed the human rights agenda on mining.
“It is a platform to unite all anti-mining groups and individuals during the electoral period. It is an agenda to challenge all candidates to take up and respond to the call for an end to large-scale destructive mining,” he said.
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