CONTENT WARNING: Brutality, violence against women
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On June 15, 2021, the 3rd Special Battalion Force of the Philippine Army opened fire on several Lumad farmers in Lianga, Surigao del Sur, claiming the lives of three indigenous persons: Willy Rodriguez, Lenie Rivas, and 12-year-old student Angel Rivas.
Reports from the community call attention to red-tagging by state forces who claim that the victims were armed members of the New People’s Army (NPA), as well as the brutal ways in which the bodies of Angel and Lenie—a minor and a lesbian woman—were violated by soldiers.
Just last week, three farmers were murdered in Masbate. In 2019, fourteen farmers were murdered in Negros Oriental. In 2018, seven Tausug farmers were killed in Sulu. More than 170 farmers have been killed in this regime alone, many of them red-tagged and accused of rebellion.
Indiscriminate killings have been a defining feature of this regime — one that encourages state violence against indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands, under a president who sees no problem with shooting women in their vaginas.
Metro Manila Pride strongly condemns the AFP’s brutal occupation of Lumad communities in Mindanao and elsewhere in the Philippines. State forces cannot continue to commit murders in the guise of a counterinsurgency program that does nothing but tear down community schools, displace local communities, and steal ancestral lands from indigenous peoples.As the International Criminal Court begins its investigation of the Duterte regime’s pattern of killings, we call on all individuals to join human rights advocates and civil society organizations in holding the national government accountable.
#StopTheKillings
Metro Manila Pride
16 June 2021
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