Uphold IP rights, condemn attempt at Charter change

THE Panaghiusa Philippine Network rejects the latest attempt of the Marcos Jr. administration to amend or revise the current Philippine Constitution as it will only aggravate the attacks on the rights of Indigenous Peoples (IP).

Opening our lands to 100% foreign ownership will intensify various encroachments into IP territories. This drives development aggression that history and concrete experience have proven detrimental to our lives, lands, livelihood, culture, and rights.

According to RBH No. 7, foreign ownership will not include agricultural lands, but such exclusion can be overridden by simple reclassification and conversion. Worse, the proposal does not exclude indigenous territories from coverage, threatening the constitutional guarantee of IP rights. With such intensification of development aggression, the violation of the IPs’ right to self-determination, particularly their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) will also worsen.

This will result in the wholesale plunder of our natural resources by foreign corporations, denying indigenous communities of their right to develop and leaving them with nothing but the disruption of our ecological and social fabric.

This proposal under the latest cha-cha attempt ultimately surrenders our national sovereignty to the interests of foreign countries and big businesses.

Currently, the IPs are the most marginalized in terms of basic social services, having little to no access to clean water, electricity, health services, and education that is culturally-relevant.

When they try to access health and education services, they face grave discrimination. When they built their own schools, they were tagged as terrorists, their schools were bombed, and their teachers were massacred. This dominant culture of discrimination and state neglect on IPs will worsen, as the proposal to charter change also opens education and media to 100% foreign ownership.

Thus, our people’s national and political consciousness and basic needs will be placed in the hands of foreign companies who do not hold any responsibility to our people, and whose interests are solely for profit that leaves nothing for us to benefit from.

IP and IP Human Rights Defenders (IPHRDs) who stand against foreign, extractive, and destructive projects, and the acts of deceit and manipulation by the government, are subject to harassment, vilification, terrorist tagging, criminalization, and extrajudicial killings.

Indeed, foreign investments have been heavily securitized leading to the widespread militarization of IP communities.

With the encroachment of foreign, extractive and destructive companies into ancestral territories, there will be an escalation of militarization, bombing, and direct attacks on the lives of the IPs.

Amending the Constitution will place our civil and political rights at risk; provisions protecting social justice and human rights will be at risk of removal. As such, the state will become more emboldened in its violent attacks.

We sense nothing but ill intent from the Marcos Jr. administration’s push to amend the Constitution to advance foreign corporate interests at the expense of people’s rights. Charter change will ultimately lead to the ethnocide of our people.

The national government must instead refocus on promoting the rights of the Indigenous Peoples, protecting their ancestral lands, and prioritizing the welfare of the people. Instead of Charter change, we call for genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization.

We IPs and IPHRDs will be vigilant in defending our rights from the threats of Charter change. — PANAGHIUSA PHILIPPINE NETWORK <commmunication.panaghiusa@gmail.com>