After Tagum City prosecutors dropped the fabricated charges against the Lumad students, volunteer teachers, and elders collectively known as “Bakwit School 7”, Jomar Benag, decried the harrowing experiences of the Lumad both in their ancestral domains and in the cities—particularly their detention.
After elements of the military and paramilitary groups attacked their homes, the Lumad students were forced to seek refuge. They found one in the University of San Carlos’ (USC’s) “Bakwit School Program” that was conducted in partnership with the religious order, Societas Verbi Divini (SVD).
However, last February 15, the same forces along with officials from the Department of Social Welfare and Development proceeded to raid the Lumad in the USC Talamban Campus in a fake “rescue” mission by Cebu PNP.
Afterwards, trumped-up kidnapping charges were filed against the Bakwit School 7 which included UP alumnus and Bakwit Teacher Chad Booc. Aside from students and teachers, the police also apprehended sick Lumad datus.
After securing an important victory in their release from being jailed for three months — despite the continued government custody of 18 Lumad minors arrested with them in Cebu Benag asserts that there is nothing wrong with Lumad students pursuing an education just like a typical Filipino student.
Series of aerial bombings, militarization, red-tagging and massacres in Mindanao left them no choice but to evacuate their ancestral lands and build their own Lumad schools. In 2015, state forces killed ALCADEV Director Emerito Samarca while paramilitaries killed Salugpongan student Obello Bay-ao in 2017.
As of 2016, Save Our Schools Network claims that at least 178 Lumad schools have been closed by the government due to baseless red-tagging. In 2017, Duterte threatened to bomb Lumad communities, accusing them having links with communist rebels.
Benag says they are not criminals, but the Duterte regime, through the military, is hell-bent on prosecuting and persecuting them anyway.
