PAGADIAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Oct. 30, 2012) – An unidentified gunman shot and wounded the head of an environmental group who was opposing destructive mining and illegal logging operations in the southern Philippines, according to Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment.
It said Dr. Isidro Olan, executive director of the Lovers of Nature Foundation, was shot while he was driving home in the town of Carmen in Surigao del Sur on Monday afternoon.
“Dr. Olan was a passionate environment defender who opposed destructive and large-scale mining as well as illegal logging activities in Cantilan and other areas of Surigao del Sur. We ask for everyone’s prayers for Dr. Olan’s immediate recovery, and for justice to be swiftly exacted upon the assassins and their clients as well,” Fr. Oliver Castor, spokesperson for the Task Force Justice for Environment Defenders, said in a statement sent Tuesday to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
The motive of the attack is still unknown, but Castor said there could be no other motivation to assassinate Olan than his staunch opposition to ecologically destructive projects in their areas.
“If the Aquino government claims to be hard workers for the protection of human rights, we demand to hear about their work on Dr. Olan’s case now. In fact, we would like to hear what about what they have done now about the 61 extrajudicial killings of environment defenders we recorded since 2001 that remains languishing in court up to the present,” the priest said.
Clemente Bautista, convener of the Defend Patrimony Alliance, said the failed assassination of Olan sent a chilling effect to environmental advocates.
“It’s not even Halloween and yet this latest attack on Dr. Olan already produces a chilling effect to environmental advocates. The year 2012 is already the bloodiest year for environmental advocates in this new millennium, and it infuriates us to remember that President Benigno Aquino dismissed the ever mounting cases of human rights violations in the country is dismissed as just propaganda of the Left. Is the attempt to take the life of Dr. Olan for his defense of the environment not real enough for Aquino?” Bautista asked.
Both groups demanded for an immediate and independent investigation of the attempted assassination of Olan. No individuals or groups claimed responsibility for the attack.
In September, gunmen ambushed a Subanen tribal leader Timuay Locenio Manda and his son Jordan in Zamboanga del Sur province. His son was killed in the attack.
Manda, who is fighting for their ancestral lands, was heading to school to bring his son when gunmen attacked them in the town of Bayog. Two of the 5 attackers, were arrested days later.
“In my effort to assert our rights and to protect our people and ancestral domain, my beloved son was sacrificed. It is very painful and I thirst for justice,” he said. “I vow to continue my struggle in order not to make my son’s death in vain. I need your support in this most trying time of my life as a father and a leader.”
Manda’s group – representing the 3,000-strong Council of Pigsalabukan Guhom de Bayog – is claiming some 23,800 hectares of lands in the town where several mining companies are operating.
Government authorities recently shut down illegal mining activities in Bayog and charged at least 16 people, including a town councilor, accused as one of the mining financiers. (Mindanao Examiner)
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