How We Can Undo Injustice and Help Indigenous Communities

He was in his mid-twenties, young, dedicated, a defender of the trees and the ecology of his native Amazon rain forest and guardian of his community. Paulo Paulino Guajajara is the latest of many indigenous people shot and killed in a cruel and treacherous murder by illegal loggers. His companion, Laércio Souza Silva, was also seriously wounded but he survived. It happened in the Arariboia reservation in Maranhao State, Brazil.

The indigenous Guajajara community of the Amazon have organized themselves as forest guardians to stop the encroachments of loggers and agri-corporations on their ancestral lands and rain forests.The corporate elite covet the land for growing monocrops like soya and cattle-raising and mining and try to drive away the indigenous people.The people in these remote regions are also victims of Coronavirus and many have died infected no doubt by the invaders and exploiters of the forests.

Forest trees are chain-sawed to death and burnt on a funeral pyre of devastation and greed. What the exploiters deliver is death and destruction. What the indigenous communities want is life, peace and solitude and what is rightfully theirs.

In the Philippines, 46 land defenders and protectors of ancestral rights of Filipino indigenous people have been murdered in 2019 on Negros Island and in Mindanao. They have been wrongly branded subversives by government officials out to crush dissent and silence opposition by indigenous people.

The intensity of the incursions has greatly increased since the dismissal and death of environmental campaigner Gina Lopez who, as secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), cancelled dozens of licences and permits for mining firms for violating environmental protection rules and failure to respect the rights of the indigenous communities. Since then, the murder rate of environmentalists has greatly increased to 46. Previously, in 2018, the number of land defenders killed was 29. The Philippines was declared the world’s most dangerous place for environmental protectors.

The sacred rights of indigenous people that have occupied and peopled the Philippine lands and forests for thousands of years, while clearly stated in the Constitution and law, are trampled upon and ignored. The indigenous people are disgracefully considered inferior human beings subjected to racist slurs and humiliation and their rights continually violated. The environmental NGOs, Mongabay and Kalikasan, keep records of number of environment defenders killed. They said that, “63 percent comprise agribusiness workers and farmers, followed by government officials and forest rangers (35%), indigenous peoples (20%), and lawyers and church workers (4%).”

In Brazil, the campaign of President Jair Bolsonaro to open up the Amazon and allow agri-business to destroy the forests for soya production and cattle farmers has been called genocidal of the indigenous people. The people will lose their lives, families, culture and way of life. They risk their lives every day to protect their rights and the environment. Paulo Paulino Guajajara is the most recent victim. Millions of unique wildlife will also perish and disappear from the face of the earth as the land grabbers cut and burn the trees and destroy the wildlife habitat. A July 2019 report by NGOs stated that over 7,200 square miles of the Brazilian rainforest has been deforested and burnt between 2017 and 2019.

With the destruction of the rain forests around the world, the absorption of CO2 has greatly decreased causing greater global warming. The more than 1 billion beef and dairy cattle on the planet emit methane gas that is even more destructive to the atmosphere than CO2. The global warming dries the forest and woodlands around the world and they are devastated by wildfires. More than a billion creatures and many people were killed in the massive bushfires that raged across Australia recently. The Guardian newspaper reported that a royal commission was told by a professor that “…96,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including 35,000 children, were affected by the fires…….. That amounts to 29 percent of the indigenous population in affected states, and 12 percent of the national Indigenous population.”

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007 set a standard for national laws to follow. Philippine laws protecting indigenous are weak and mining and agri- corporations run by local elites exploit loopholes to violate indigenous ancestral land rights.

Indigenous people are the original inhabitants and occupiers of the lands and they have natural rights over the mountains, forests, seas and lakes. They ought to be honoured, respected, and affirmed in dignity and the first beneficiaries of wealth generated from the natural resources, as original owners of the sources of wealth stolen from them everywhere.

A great wrong perpetuated by the invaders and never righted. The Aeta of the Philippines, the original occupants of the islands for some twenty or thirty thousand years, have been driven into poverty. Most indigenous people have practically no representation, few spokespersons and are victims of systematic racism, rejected and treated as throwaway people. When and how can such gross social and racial injustice and selfishness be overcome? How will the world change for the better?

Great social and environmental change to undo wrongs and injustice, to restore human dignity and to overcome evil and poverty so people can live in peace, respect and trust each other can only happen when inner change comes in the people as a whole.

That change can only be when one of the greatest and most profound virtue, a heart-felt feeling of the human person is offered, accepted and lived. That is compassion. This is a strong feeling of empathy and concern for the plight and suffering of others. It empowers and creates a desire to help strangers. It is a spiritual force that inspires and compels a person to take effective action to alleviate the suffering, deprivation, oppression or exploitation of any kind and it never seeks a reward or imposes conditions.

To bring about compassion that will transform the unjust and uncaring world, we need to have compassion ourselves and to act upon it so that by example we will inspire it in others and cause it to spread. Then, then the people of compassion can change the world for the greater good of all people.

In Praise of Preda Fair Trade Dried Mangoes

There was great happiness in the villages of the Zambales and Mindanao mountains this year- the mango trees produced an abundance of mango fruit. The small-scale Filipino farmers and indigenous people were delighted. Happy, beaming farmers brought their crates of mangoes to the Preda Center where they were weighed, sorted and tagged and the farmers were paid a high price for their fruit. In Mindanao, the harvest was also good. The farmers in the Preda association of mango growers brought tons of fruit to the processing plant for Preda.

It has been three years without a mango harvest in the mountains of Zambales and low mango yields in Mindanao. Both areas have unique sensitive climates. They had been badly affected due to the drastic changes in the world climate and global warming caused by emissions of CO2 gases.

The farmers supply their mango fruit to the Preda Fair Trade project which delivers the famous Preda dried mango and mango puree products to the World Shops and supermarkets in European countries, Japan and Korea. They love them because the Preda puree products and dried mango slices are unique. They are different in taste and are of very high quality. Once the customer tastes them, they want more. That is the success of the Preda dried mango. All others taste artificial from many additives.

The Preda mangoes are processed without any added chemicals, artificial coloring, preservatives or other ingredients. They have a wonderful natural sweet taste and are healthy nutritious snacks important for children and adults when we are all striving to avoid the commercial snacks that are so dangerous to our health.

The Preda mangoes are very special and they are produced to fair trade standards. There is guaranteed no child labor, exploitation, no pesticides or toxic fertilizers used and fair trade prices are paid to the farmers. Besides, any earnings from the sales are donated by Preda to support needy children in the Preda-run homes for abused children.

The mangoes that are processed into mango puree are certified as organic by an international certification group because they meet the strict inspections and verification of a clean and chemically-free mountain environment.

In Davao province, Mindanao 127 small farmers in remote areas care for over a thousand mango trees scattered across the hilly country. Last month, Donard Angeles, the Preda coordinator, went to these villages and ingeniously loaded school supplies, bags, notebooks, pens and pencils on a hired motorcycle and distributed them to hundreds of school children of the farmers.

Besides paying the farmers a generous bonus for their deliveries of mangoes, the harvest of one big mango tree will also support a child in school for one year. This keeps teenagers from going to the city where they could become victims of human trafficking. The women are the empowered leaders and manage the money in the families. They start small businesses.

Josie has four children and with her husband care for about 50 mango trees. She used her bonus for one year to start a small village store. It supplies many needs of the villagers and she is prospering. Michelle bought a sow and started pig-raising. She and her family are doing very-well. Most of the farmers are now free from dire poverty as a result of the livelihood that came from the sale of dried mangoes.

The growing and supply of Preda dried mangoes distributed by our dedicated partners has helped to provide funds for the supply of village communal toilets and water wells and hand pumps in the remote villages of the Aeta indigenous people. These are subsistence farmers. Their ancestral rainforests were cut down and the trees shipped to Europe and Japan to help rebuild those countries after World War II.

They turned to hill farming of vegetables and root crops but they did not earn any money from harvesting and selling the pico mangoes that grew in abundance but are not commercially  in demand unlike the popular carabao mangoes. When Preda and our partner in Germany experimented in processing the pico mango, it was a success and the taste is excellent. Since it is grown high in the hills and mountains where there is no chemical farming, organic certification became a possibility.

After three years of organizing and holding seminars for the mountain farmers and training local inspectors and meeting the many bureaucratic requirements, we applied for organic certification. After many visits by international experts in organic certification and local inspectors, the mangoes were finally approved as organic, a great success indeed.

Every year, there is an inspection by the certification body to see all standards are maintained. Even when there were no harvests, they had to be inspected. This year, they passed and qualified as meeting the strict organic standards. This is a big success for indigenous people in remote areas with little access to education.

There are 414 in the program. The latest Preda Fair Trade action now is the planting of trees all over the mountains including 3,958 mango saplings of carabao variety, which produce a favored variety of fruit that is of higher value. For every three packets of dried mangoes bought, we can plant another mango sapling. That is helping to reforest the denuded hills, absorb CO2 and prevent global warming.

This is a great way by which people can offset their CO2 footprint. Also, buying Preda dried mango helps farmers and children since we donate a percentage of earnings to the children’s homes. Preda dried mango is a fair trade, healthy food that helps many people including the consumer.

How We Can Save the Plant and Ourselves

The ongoing burning of the rain forests in Brazil under the newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro is an indication of the destructive power of a dictatorial leader. He is allowing thousands of hectares of rain forest to be cut down and burnt. Toxic fumes engulf many Brazilian towns. He is changing the forest into grazing lands for beef production. It is disastrous, it adds to global warming as the rain forest absorbs huge amount of CO2. Billions of cattle raised for beef emit millions of tons of methane gas annually that contribute to global warming. It is a policy whereby the rich get richer and the indigenous people lose their ancestral forestland.

In the Philippines, more than 90% of the original rain forest cover has been destroyed. Illegal logging companies find ways to circumvent the ban on logging and continue to eat away at the environment destroying species and plants. Activist defending the remaining forests have been killed. A Global Witness report released on July 29, 2019 ranked the Philippines as the worst violator of the rights of environmental and land defenders in 2018.

One of most influential Philippine environmentalists was Gina Lopez, a good of friend of mine, who passed away recently at 65. She was from a leading family and became the most active and dedicated secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and closed 29 mines for destroying the environment. She was known as a person of great integrity. She served for 8 months but won the ire of the pro-mining group members of the Commission on Appointments composed of senators and congressmen and her appointment was not confirmed. She continued supporting many NGO environmental causes and received a UN award for her work in child protection.

At the Preda Foundation, conservation work goes on. We are planting 3000 more mango trees with the Aeta indigenous upland farmers of Zambales. This is to give them more livelihood, prevent landslides and soil erosion, protect hundreds of species and off-set carbon emissions to help reduce global warming, see photos on www.preda.org and www.predafairtrade.net. Once in the early 1950s, when I was growing up, we had an organic vegetable garden. I ate the beans and peas raw. They were delicious. That was before the destructive onslaught of chemical farming in the 1960s where there was widespread, indiscriminate, spraying of pesticides in the United States and in Europe. They were fossil-based synthetic fertilizers and they poison and damage the planet. Farmers were persuaded to use them.

Chemical farming changed everything in agriculture and the food production industry. The publication of the challenging environmental science book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson in 1962 challenged the chemical industry and caused an uproar, thus, the environmental protection movement was born. Today, environmentalists and conservationists are fighting to preserve the planet’s ecosystems and reminding us that all life on earth and our lives depend on preserving the balance of nature in a healthy environment where the oceans, forests, plants, crops, insects, animals and all wild life can live and thrive in harmony in a sustainable way.

The latest UN report, the first in 15 years, predicts that up to a million plants and animals and fish are in danger of extinction in the next twenty or thirty years. It is happening by allowing deforestation and spewing plastic into the oceans and rivers. If the killing of the magnificent elephants for their ivory continues at the present pace, they will be practically extinct in fifty years time.

Twenty thousand elephants are being killed every year, that is 55 a day. This is shocking and avoidable. Some countries in Africa have strong protection measures, others do not. Some Asians want the elephant tusks carved into ivory ornaments and they pay high prices. Although the trade in ivory is now banned, China may circumvent it. Some very ignorant and deluded people with weak procreation ability think rhino horn has medicinal properties to aid their drooping and flagging sexual prowess. They are wrong, it is useless as a medicine.

The South African government won permission to open the rhino population to trophy hunting. It is “a kill them to save them” policy. It is all wrong. The Northern white rhino is now extinct, and if this policy continues then the Southern black will be extinct too. It is ignorance, quackery, and greed that cause mass extinction. Only about 5,000 black rhinos exist today, almost 2,000 of them in South Africa. At the turn of the century there were many thousands across the continent.

The UN report says one million species are at risk of extinction and humans are causing it. We have to change our lifestyle, stop eating beef, eat more fish and be more vegetarian. The fish too are endangered, poisoned by the millions of tons of plastic dumped in the oceans. Despite this gloomy picture, there is hope to preserve the planet and wildlife. Brian O’Donnell, Director of the Wyss Campaign for Nature, said in a statement during the ongoing conference in Geneva that there is still time to halt the mass extinction. They are working with National Geographic to preserve 30% of the planet by 2030 called the “Global Deal for Nature”.

Another 100 groups of scientists and environmentalists working together have a plan to preserve half of the planet by 2050. It means that they will campaign and lobby for an end to the plundering of natural resources, massive extraction of minerals and deforestation. It is widespread in the Philippines and is destroying the ancestral lands of the indigenous people. They will promote massive planting of trees and the banning of plastics as much as they can.

The irresistible urge for capitalists to have endless economic growth and development is destroying the environment. The Rome Statement in 1972 on the “Limits to Growth” foresaw the present disaster of unlimited economic and population growth on a planet with finite resources. The warming of the planet is also causing the extinction of species. The development banks have funded coal-fired power plants, polluting industries and especially the plastic-based industries. A faster switch to renewal sources for electricity is the answer.

Electing people to government with a strong commitment to the environment is the only hope to change damaging policies and to save the planet together with the many actions and projects of the public. It is the healthy, chemical-free environment that will provide us humans with a sustainable planet and provide healthy organic food free of deadly pesticides and chemicals.

Fair Trade and the Indigenous People

The most recent discovery of a human fossil, a jawbone with four teeth in Ethiopia has amazed anthropologists because of its age. It strengthens the theory that the migration of the first humans out of Africa occurred about 1.5 million years ago.

Some of them moved through Asia and across land bridges into South East Asia and the Philippines.

Their descendants could well be the Filipino indigenous people, the real survivors of an ancient past and the true owners of the Philippine ancestral lands. Marginalized as they are now-a-days their valid claims to ancestral land rights has been largely ignored by the dominating elite families that claim ownership and control 70 percent of the wealth of the country.

The goal of the Preda Fair Trade is to help these indigenous people and the small mango and coconut growers. We call on all who respect human rights to support them in their lawful and rightful claims to their ancestral land. They need help to resist the incursions of mining companies and land grabbers into the last remaining lands that they have occupied and for hundreds for thousands of years. The rich corrupt politicians have cut down the once magnificent rain forests. Fighting for social justice for the poor, the oppressed people is an important part of Fair Trade.

Juan and Maria De Los Reyes is one of many families that are members of the Preda Mango Farmers association in the remote villages in the Zambales and Bataan mountains. They have four children aged 5 to 16 years old and have lived in poverty all their lives. They are subsistent farmers growing their own food and selling the surplus to the traders in the far off towns.

The market buyers cheated them out of the rightful price for their vegetables, banana, cassava, honey and wild mangoes. They remained impoverished like thousands of their tribal neighbors and their children never went to school beyond the fifth grade. They carried sacks of the Pico mango to the traders in the far off town but received just a pittance for their produce. They were cheated and exploited. So they stopped harvesting the mangoes and what they could not eat they left them to rot on the tree or the ground.

That was before the Preda Fair Trade project developed a new tasty Mango puree based on the Pico variety of mangoes. The making of mango fruit juice, jam, and other products by the German importing partner DWP changed all that. The pico mango are soon to be certified as Organic and farmers are earning 200% more for their Pico mango. It is hard work to meet the many requirements of the organic certification organizations and it's costly too for Preda Fair Trade and DWP based in Ravensburg. The inspection fees are very high and approval can still be withheld.

For example, every mango tree has to be have a plate number nailed on it and each one marked on a map. The Preda agriculturists and the farmers have so far hiked the mountains and tagged as many as eight thousand mango trees.

The farmers have attended dozens of seminars and training sessions to learn organic farming methods even though the fruit is growing wild in remote areas where chemicals like pesticides are never used. The farmers are too poor to be able to afford to buy them.

This and the other Preda assisted development projects in their village, like water pumps, solar lights and bonus payments are helping make an easier life for Juan and Maria taking them and many more out of dire poverty. The children now go to school to higher grades.

Honest trading and paying just prices for products is what overcomes rural poverty. Consumers of products ought to learn about Fair Trade, buy Fair Trade products and not participate in the exploitation and oppression of the poor.

Juan and Maria are proud members of the Aeta people, the ancient indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines. They have strong moral values and have their own indigenous herbal medicines and traditional remedies to treat diseases and wounds.

They are true survivors, their ancestors walked out of Africa hundreds of thousands. Like many indigenous tribal peoples, the newly arrived migrants from Malaysia and Indonesia gradually populated the Islands and the Aeta were soon retreating from the coastal areas into the deeper forests where they lived a nomadic life as hunters and gathers in the forests.

They still live in harmony with nature and their culture is based on the love and respect for the natural world. They see and relate a greater higher power in nature.

They were wise and had a well developed knowledge and practice of using herbal medicines and they survived the harsh life in the forest for thousands for years. Their community life was sustainable and enduring.

They are mostly a gentle and friendly non-violent people and their DNA will lead directly back to their African ancestors.

But then came the Spanish invasion and conquistadores and colonial period and the Aeta and other hill tribes retreated deeper into the rain forests and mountains. But the onslaught of Western diseases with the Spanish was a devastating blow and many died. They remained generally ignored and uneducated and lived outside the mainstream of modern society.

Their shelters were and are still today mostly rustic and simple bamboo and grass one-roomed homes. They became the poorest of rural poor. Now they are organizing and Fair Trade is changing their lives for the better. But much more has yet to be done to help them. Buying the Preda Fair Trade mango products in world-shops and asking for them in supermarkets is a great way for consumers to help.

When the international volunteers and interns come to Preda they visit the indigenous people and some stay as welcome guests in their villages and experience the simple life of these people. They absorb the sounds, smells and peace and quiet of these remote villages. They see the stars, some for the first time in their lives. They are far from electricity, the Internet and cell phones and closer to the people for the first time and free from their gadget-obsessed lives.

They are part of something great, working for unselfish human development and for justice.

The Story of the Christmas Lights

Hiking uphill through the hot, tropical afternoon to the Aeta village of Baliwet, San Marcelino carrying our loaded backpacks was a challenge in itself. The happy thought of bringing some Christmas cheer into the lives of the very poor indigenous people kept us going. Our mission was to bring Christmas lights into their lives. It was inspiring and encouraging.

The only reward for our days hiking would be the healthy exercise, fresh mountain air, the aroma of flowers and fauna wafting from the forest vegetation and at the end of our journey would be the simple mountain food of the native people. There we looked forward to the Christmas joy and smiles that would light up the people's faces when we opened our gifts. That would make it all worthwhile. Sharing with others is the joy of living.

These were the feelings and thoughts of Donard, Roger and Shawn- the dedicated community workers of the Preda organization who like the "Three Kings" were bringing gifts of Christmas lights to the remote mountain village. It was a mission to light up their lives and enlighten them about the rights and dignity of women and children.

In years past before electricity, candles and oil lamps helped dispel the dark and lessen the fears and imagined threats that it can bring. Children are most vulnerable to fear of the dark. They imagine menacing monsters and witches in the dancing shadows on the walls of their rooms or little house as they lay down to sleep. Life without a night light can be scary, dangerous and non-productive.

We take light and electricity for granted in our lives and most people in the modern world have never lived without it. With a majority of people in the world living in cities for the first time in human history, they hardly know what the sky looks like at night.

They cannot see the stars or the moon as they are too busy watching the screens of their television or smart phones or tablets. Many would be seriously disoriented and perhaps even traumatized if deprived of the electricity to run them.

Many people are alienated from the world around them and think nothing of the environmental destructive forces that are at work burning the fossil fuels that provide electricity. Power generation by burning coal and oil darkens the skies, damages our lungs, pumps carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that heats the planet and is changing the world's climate for the worst.

Modern humans have lost much contact to the natural world. They rarely experience the dusk and the creeping darkness as the end of a working day. Few wake up with the rising sun.

A Christmas star these days is a comet that does not herald the coming of a saviour and captivates awe struck ancient people as it had at the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Nowadays modern people land scientific instruments on its surface to determine its composition and ask how comets might have contributed to human life on Earth.

But we ought be asking how all the magnificent scientific theories, learning and discoveries are benefiting mankind to end poverty, human hardship and social injustice. They are not. The meaning of the Christmas story has been lost to the modern craze of self-indulgence, greed and an unreflective life overwhelmed by commercialization, triviality and nonsense.

Self-giving to help others is alien and incomprehensible to many these days. Gratifying personal urges, desires and wants is the paramount purpose of living and it is self destructive. The message of Jesus of Nazareth can change all that if believed and followed.

The poor wallowing in poverty and hunger are left to wallow. But the greatest values and unselfish human behavior so necessary to human kind are in the Christmas story and gospel message. They are the key of the survival of the species and the planet.

As the "Three Kings" arrived in the remote Aeta village, they were greeted with delight and smiles and a great welcome by these people of simple rural living. They have no electricity and have lived according to the natural cycle where the rotation of the earth and its journey around the sun determines their life and that of all living things. That was about to change.

After the welcome and a humble healthy meal, it was time for gift giving. They opened the backpacks and laid out the forty lights that are part of a bigger donation of solar lamps from the parishioners of churches in Melbourne in Australia. The people understood immediately what they were and clapped with glee and beaming smiles.

Each lamp is made as a hard plastic disk in the shape of a thick pancake with a dozen tiny LED bulbs on top. They are powered by rechargeable batteries. The bottom of the "Pancake Lamp" needs to be exposed to the sun to recharge the batteries. In the Philippines there is lots of sunshine. The lamps last up to 9 hours a charge. Technology had provided a way to save the sun into the night.

Now the children can do their home work, the adults can carve, do woodwork and basketry. Some adults who can read will enlighten themselves with the educational comics brought by the “Three Kings.” In other less safe villages where women and children have to go out at night to the communal toilet, they will be safer with the bright lamps. The fear of the dark has been banished.

This simple but effective and efficient lamp is bringing light to hundreds of people in remote places. But it reminds us that solar and wind power and geothermal electricity generation is the way of the future if we are to save our planet and ourselves. Christmas is about salvation, in this world and the next. 

Indigenous People Struggle for Their Rights

The leader of the community of the Aeta indigenous people proudly led me around the hillside resettlement community where the 200 or so families were establishing a new village community. Their ancestral village and lands were wiped out in a torrential typhoon and gigantic floods. My mission, helped by the German Church agency Misereor, was to help them resettle and develop basic organic agriculture, coffee, coconut, and mangos.  

As I walked the hillside, I passed dozens of small grass-roofed huts with walls of bamboo matting. Vegetable gardens and the newly planted coconut seedlings, mango saplings and coffee stood witness to the hardworking nature of these people who were once forest nomads. Their mountains are now denuded and covered with tall cogon grass. I saw how they are replanting the trees and reclaiming their deforested ancestral lands. Their days of hunting and gathering are long gone because of the massive non-stop logging of their rain-forests during the past sixty years by the greedy logging companies of the ruling elite.

Only when there was about 3 percent of the forest left and the best land had been grabbed by coconut and palm oil plantation corporations did the government ironically granted by law  these indigenous people their "rights" to their ancestral lands, hills, and mountains but they were already stripped bare and greatly reduced in size. They are more reservations rather than ancestral domains. That bill that was passed was in 1997, Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous People's Rights Act (IPRA) was passed after decades of campaigning by Filipino environmental and human rights groups and international pressure. It gave them nothing what was not already theirs by ancestral right. 

The laws are just worthless sheets of paper without rule of law and the political will to implement them and a corruption-free judiciary. In the Philippines, the law is what the authorities say it is, something to ignore, circumvent, manipulate to their own advantage. It’s a game to cheat at, a way to get super rich and a weapon to use against their opponents.

So the logging and the land grabbing of the indigenous communities continue to this day. It has grown worse since the demand and prices of minerals have soared to incredible peaks in recent years; extractive open pit mining has become the latest cruel curse to descend on the villages of the indigenous people.

The government and their business tycoons, in partnership with international mining conglomerates, have passed mining laws that in effect run roughshod over the rights of the people and their ancestral lands, and give the mining corporations, managed by their friends and relatives in cahoots with international corporations, permits for the extraction of minerals: black sand, gold, silver, nickel, chromite, copper ore  and many more valuable minerals that rightfully belong to the people.

Then waving pieces of paper meaningless to the people, the bulldozers begin to rip out the last remaining forests, excavate hills, pollute the rivers and drive away the people. Many thousands have been displaced and turned into refugees surviving in squalid centers.

Paramilitary groups like the Bagani hired to protect the mining sites have been armed by the military and allegedly secretly paid by the Philippine cronies of the multinational mining corporations. They are uncontrolled and are accused of assassinating dissidents, protestors and sympathizers and leaders of the threatened communities of indigenous people.

Father Fausto Tentorio, an Italian missionary of the PIME missionary society was well loved for his peaceful support and advocacy for the rights of the indigenous people who call themselves Lumads. He supported them in North Cotabato but was considered a threat by the mining interest in the area. One morning 17th October 2011, while leaving his rectory to go to the villages, two men on a motorcycle rode up, stopped and the one on the pillion fired repeatedly killing him dead. No one has been investigated or arrested.

Fr. Tullio Favali of PIME, of the same mission, was also shot and murdered for supporting indigenous people in blocking a logging company from ravaging the forest. Many pastors, social workers, and community organizers have been tagged as communist rebels and executed in a similar way.

After taking an active stand in support of the striking sugar workers at the Hacienda Luisita owned by the Cojuangco-Aquino family, the Most Rev. Alberto Ramento, Bishop of the Philippine Independent Church in the Parish of San Sebastian, Tarlac City was stabbed to death on October 03, 2006 when assassins broke into the rectory.

The communist inspired New People's Army move into these areas supposedly to defend the rights of the people but instead the people are caught in the crossfire as the army go after the communist rebels waging a 45 year long insurgency.

In  February 2013, on Boracay island, the tourist beach for international and local tourists, community organizer Dexter Condez was gunned down while on his way home from a community meeting with the Ati indigenous people. The Ati people have been driven off most of the island by land grabbers. It was his mission. He was the parish worker defending their rights. He too gave his life for them.

This is the most authentic mission in life, being a true Christian by helping others especially the downtrodden and asking no reward other than the privilege to be a follower of the Man from Nazareth. Taking a stand for them is to stand with God.

The Presidential Mining EO

The Presidential Executive Order (EO) outlining the administration’s policy on mining is something to be welcomed as it shows a positive concern in protecting sensitive ecological areas that could be adversely affected by mining, especially the horrific open pit-mining that rips out the heart and soul of mountain-sides and forests, and does untold ecological damage. The EO has positive aspects. It reasserts the provisions of existing laws that protect the environment and ancestral lands. The good will of the presidential order may not be strong enough to combat the age-old tyrant of good laws and good will, namely corrupt officials embedded in the political dynastic system that makes its own laws.


While the Presidential Executive Order expanded protection and declared 78 areas “no-go” for mining, it may be unenforceable as some powerful corrupt government officials especially in Mindanao, are ignoring and defying the existing law. They continue to illegally issue exploration and mining permits to mining corporations in the ancestral lands of the indigenous people where cronies of past governments, even those of the Marcos’ era still hold the power.

The EO re-enforces the mining law, RA 7942, known as the Philippine Mining Act of 1995. Under its provisions, the officials of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) are strictly forbidden to entertain mining applications for exploration, mapping and any kind of mining in old growth or virgin forest, proclaimed watershed areas, forest reserves, wilderness areas, mangrove forests, mossy forests, national parks, provincial or municipal forests, parks, green belts game refuge and bird sanctuaries, as defined by law and in areas expressly prohibited under the National Integrated Protected Areas System, (NIPAS) under Republic act No. 7586, Department Order No. 25 series of 1992 and other laws.

Ancestral lands of the indigenous people are strictly no-go areas for mining unless there is clear and explicit public approval, social acceptability and informed consent after consultations. It says: "No ancestral land shall be opened for mining without the prior consent of the indigenous cultural community concerned". Despite these strong laws, the DENR and other government officials have become puppets and sided with the rich and powerful. They have wrongly and illegally given permits for them to operate, no doubt for certain unknown considerations.

The Subaanen people, whose lands and those lands of hundreds of thousand Visayan people on the Zamboanga peninsula have been invaded by mining interests; have stoutly and bravely resisted the incursions of mining companies. For fifteen years they have peacefully protested and made it known that they do not approve mining on their lands but have been ignored. Their lands are targeted for open-pit mining and since 1997; one company after another has sought and obtained mining rights in their lands specifically on Mt. Pinukis and its neighboring mountainous Medau area. The final report on Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Priorities published in 2002 states that the status of Mt. Sugarloaf, a Conservation Priority Area covering an area of 87,963.43 hectares is of extremely high criticality. They have filed legal cases against these officials and most recently a shocking court decision allowed the mining companies to join the court case in support of the government officials.

The Supreme Court granted the people a protection order, an order to the companies to cease and desist(Writ of Kalikasan) but there seems to be no power that can implement it.

It is in places and situations like this, one of thousands, where the environmental crises of the planet become practically evident. It is here where the irresponsible corporations will violate people's rights waving an illegally obtained paper, and use that to engage in destructive gauging and environmental plunder.

The American and European laws forbid wrongdoing of this kind. Prosecutors ought to look closely at these operations where their corporate citizens are violating human and ancestral rights. Court cases ought to be taken by NGOs in the countries where the mining corporations are domiciled in order to bring them to justice and save hundreds of thousands of hectares of prime lands and forest.

People around the world ought to take a stand, make their voices heard and write to President Noynoy Aquino, Malacanang Palace, Manila supporting the rights of the poor, the farmers and the indigenous people.

The Brave Non-Violence of the Subaanen People

The Subanen are native to the Zamboanga Peninsula in thewestern part of the large southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Some thousands of indigenous people all over the Philippines, especially in Mindanao, especially the Subaanen people, on the Zamboanga Peninsula have struggle for years to stop mining corporations from moving in to explore and mine the mountains and hills. They are victims of corrupt government officials and even judges who are captivated by the vested interest of the mining industry.

Some Indigenous people are sadly being forced to turn to armed resistance as the mining corporations  move into their lands.  The Subaanen people have remained steadfastly non-violent and turned to the  rule of law and trust in the  constitution to protect them and their rights.But is it enough?

Hundreds of thousands of  hectares of ancestral land has been threatened by the  illegal and corrupt acts of some officials of the  Department of  the Environment  and Natural Resources (DENR). Allegedly some of these officials  are not  on the side of the people  in Mindanao  but are for the rich and powerful mining interests and the banks that fund them.

They allegedly enrich themselves by giving mining permits to companies over ancestral lands which is forbidden by law. It is at this level in the provinces where the anti-corruption campaign of President Aquino is weakest. He has deposed a former president and a chief Justice  but not yet the corrupt officials in Mindanao. While the president is dedicated and honestly trying to clean up the stinking garbage of corruption he cannot  seemingly oust these entrenched officials, the henchmen and women of powerful political families.

They do not have allegiance to their department cabinet  secretary or the president. In fact they are ones who defy the president and are the hardest to get rid off. The President’s political allies could be behind the corrupt practices that is opening the way for the illegal logging and issuance of  mining permits. They are pushing the president to override the provincial government’s bans on open pit mining. He must resist  this pressure.

Mining companies that get a permit  to explore and mine also get a logging permit for  the cutting the  trees in the  area alloted to them for mining. This is totally destructive and is a way around the  presidential ban on logging which goes on unabated.  Just drive through Mindanao and you will pass  twenty or thirty huge trucks hauling cut logs. I have seen them myself.

For many years the Subaanen people and their supporters have  stood peacefully for their rights courageously and bravely to stop  the local dynastic families and their cronies in the International mining industry from mining their ancestral lands. The  Subaanen  have been non-violent and  trusted the democratic  rule of law to save them.

Their  breakthrough cam  in August  2011 when the Supreme Court of the Philippines  granted a Writ of Kalikasan (A protection of nature) to the people  to protect the environment of the whole of the Zamboanga Peninsula.  A Writ of Kalikasan is a powerful legal remedy under Philippine law which provides for the protection one's right to "a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature," as provided for in Section 16, Article II of the Philippine Constitution.  It  protects one's right for a healthy environment   against damage of such magnitude that it threatens life, health, or property of inhabitants in two or more cities or provinces. But the government officials are ignoring the Supreme Court  order.

Bishop  Jiminez  and three other bishops and an archbishop  signed a letter  to the London based  shareholders  of  the mining company  RTZ-CRA trying to get the officials to stop the mining and logging  wrote to the shareholders. In part he letter said; " Š.....Since the company has the right to expatriate all the profits, you, the shareholders, will probably earn some money. However, many of our people who own the lands where all the minerals are will become paupers.  Our rivers and seas will become polluted, our mountains will become deserts and our ricelands poisoned. Our forest birds and animals will become extinct. The very existence of the Subaanen, a gentle and beautiful people will be put at very high risk."

Fair Trade – Protecting Human Rights

( The Preda project is turning mango fruit to Preda Fair Trade dried mangos. Sales are boosted by growing demand and so it is expanding to help more indigenous hill farmers. )

Dublin, Ireland - Juanito Hacinto is a poor man in Bataan, Philippines. He is a member of the Aeta indigenous people. He sat with his wife Nita, and their three children under a mango tree to hear our message that the Preda Fair Trade organisation, Profairtrade, will pay 100% higher for their mango fruit so that they could have a better life.  The Preda project is turning mango fruit to Preda Fair Trade dried mangos. Sales are boosted by growing demand and so it is expanding to help more indigenous hill farmers. The not-for profit project is using earning to bring practical economic help and justice to their villages, social benefits and development too. Sales of the mangos go to help exploited and abused women and children also.

Juanito and Nita were happy to hear this as they only get a pittance for their mangos from commercial traders and the price is so low it is not worth even harvesting and carrying them over the mountain to sell. There is no road and not even a viable school in their remote village. Preda Fair Trade dried mangos will help empower them to get the school operating and teaching the children. A child with a cleft lip was found and brought for a surgical operation. After speech therapy she will learn to smile and talk normally for the first time in her life.

Fair Trade fortnight is a time when we ought to think how we live and consume products. Do the faith based values we hold dear apply to what we buy and consume. When we buy products do we ask the supermarket manager where it's from and is just and fair? Faith without action for doing good, like bringing about social justice, is useless, St. James says.

This past week I had an interesting meeting with the Minister of Trade and Development, Joe Costello, in Dublin, Ireland about the Preda Fair Trade project and human rights advocacy and discussed how it helps deliver many services to the small farmers. The presentation showed how people are trafficked and exploited especially children in the Philippines and together we are helping to deliver the shared programme of strengthening respect for human rights everywhere.

The Preda human rights advocacy and practical action for victims of human rights abuses is supported by Irish Aid under Minister Costello's office. Preda human rights advocacy is a work that goes beyond the Philippines to an international audience through networks of civil society and to various government entities in the EU countries. Defending human rights spurring economic development that brings about a more just society and earns respect in the emerging markets.

That is the same message that I shared with the members of the German parliamentary committee for Economic Cooperation and Development and the committee for foreign aid. The members mostly women, are very concerned about respect for human rights in the countries where they give aid and want to end the exploitation of women and children above all. I made a presentation to the committee last May 9, on this very theme and received their support to continue the advocacy and campaign to end sex slavery of women and children. Last August 2011 they sent a delegation to the Philippines and joined the work of Preda for a day to rescue a 15 year old child from cruel detention.

Fair Trade is all about protecting human rights in the work place paying just and fair prices and providing good working conditions for workers who produce the products that we buy, consume and use. Economic exploitation is common in the world and we have to act to end it as much as possible. Its hard for customers to know what is a product made in just and unjust fair condition. Our task is to help make them aware of the fairly traded products. That's what Fair Trade Fortnight is about.

Some people wrongly think they are helpless to help exploited workers. The consumer has power. Power to be more fully human and exercise their most powerful ability, free choice. We can choose to do good and buy fair products. We all have the power to protest and the duty to speak out when we see unfairness and exploitation. That is our sacred obligation - to speak out against evil, do good and buy fairly traded products. That's the way to go. END