UCCP COUNCIL OF BISHOPS
PRESS STATEMENT
28 September 2020
UCCP LEADERS INDIGNANT OVER COMPLAINT FILED AT THE DAVAO CITY
PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE
“This harassment on the Church by the military establishment and the government itself must stop!” An emphatic statement coming from UCCP General Secretary, Bishop Melzar Labuntog upon knowing on mass media, from PTV and from internet news portal Davao Today that several UCCP national leaders both past and present were named in the formal complaint at the Davao City Prosecutor’s Office.
“The complainants have the face of indigenous people or Lumads, but they have been under the influence of the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP), and this is an instigation of the National Task Force to End Localized Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)” explained Bishop Hamuel Tequis, the Davao City based UCCP Bishop.
Reliable mass media sources disclosed that, on September 15, some Manobo tribesmen filed complaints before the Davao City Prosecutor’s Office against several church leaders of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, Haran and other individuals they tagged as members of the New People’s Army.
Several of the forty eight (48) persons charge are UCCP leaders and members, others were not fully identified for violations of Republic Act No. 9208, as amended by Republic Act No. 10364, or the Anti-Trafficking of Persons Act (RA 9208), and Republic Act No. 7610 (RA 7610) or the “Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act”, and Republic Act No. 9851 (RA 9851) or the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity. [1]
Furthermore, the alleged violations of the laws herein mentioned are trumped-up accusations on the UCCP and the Lumad leaders sheltered in UCCP Haran, as government solutions to the several years of hiatus in the negotiations of return of the Lumads to their ancestral domain in Talaingod, Davao Del Norte. This complaint comes in a series of legal build up to crush the organized resistance of the Lumads to the NCIP’s conditions of their return which do not conform to their agreement stipulating that they should return to the ancestral land and not in a resettlement area, the land they left behind few years ago escaping for their survival because of intense militarization of their communities.
The Council of Bishops recalled the many instances when President Rodrigo Duterte, then Mayor of Davao City in 2016 have personally assured the Church that he will, within his power, judiciously support the unhampered return of the Lumads in Haran, to their ancestral land.
The forced evacuation of the indigenous peoples was not solely a phenomenon in Davao Del Norte, but a reality as well in Agusan del Sur, Misamis Occidental and in Northern Luzon. These have been going on because the peace talks and peace process between NDFP and the GRP has been stalled accompanied by attendant problems and concerns of social justice within their tribal communities and the larger society, the Council of Bishops stressed.
Rev. Daniel Palicte, Conference Minister of Southern Mindanao District Conference believes that this is a campaign to smear the reputation of the Church that has been providing refuge for numerous Lumad families in its Haran Compound in Davao City for more than five years already. But he declared that UCCP Church leaders are unfettered in their resolute commitment to do God’s compassionate mission for and among the indigenous people in Mindanao and the entire country.
Bishop Reuel Norman O. Marigza, former UCCP General Secretary and National Council of Churches in the Philippines incumbent General Secretary commented that the charges hurled at the Church leaders are persecutory measures from the government agencies that are supposedly working out probable and sustainable solutions to the needs of the indigenous people or Lumads for their safe return to their ancestral land. Instead of working out solutions, these agencies have never stopped harassing the Church and recently permitted paramilitary elements to forcibly and violently entered Haran rampaging Lumads’ sleeping quarters and classrooms and looted their food supplies and cash. They have also red-tagged our church leaders like Bishop Hamuel Tequis and others.
Interestingly, NTF-ELCAC has no scruple in filing their complaints in the prosecutor’s office because it got huge budget for 2019. The Philippine News Agency, which stated that around P20.150 billion of the budget will be used this year for cleared villages, while the remaining P16.288 billion will be appropriated next year for development projects. [2] It is disconcerting to know that the hard earned taxes of the people are used against the very interest of the people instead of serving them. Congress itself has cast doubts on the use of the huge budget of NTF-ELCAC.
The UCCP Church leaders suspect that this persecution of the church is intended to stop the church from it sprophetic witness in the midst of intensifying authoritarian regime in the country even in the midst of the pandemic. Political dissent is being suppressed as the tyrannical nature of the government is revealed in the passing of the Anti-Terrorism Law of 2020, the increasing number of extrajudicially killed especially human rights workers and advocates, peace negotiators, peasant and labor leaders.
Finally, the UCCP leaders and the Council of Bishops demand that this complaint be immediately quashed by Davao Prosecutor’s Office. They also expressed their readiness to dialogue to settle the differences with the government agencies and the military establishment. There are weightier matters that must be addressed by the government than persecuting and harassing the Church and the Lumads, the very people that government agencies have pledge to serve. +
THE COUNCIL OF BISHOPS
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