Progressive and Lumad groups held an indignation protest at the Commission on Human Rights on July 15, 2024 to condemn the decision of Davao Del Norte Regional Trial Court Branch 2 convicting former Bayan Muna representative Satur Ocampo and ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro along with 11 other teachers guilty of “other forms of child abuse”.
The case decision declares Ocampo and Rep. Castro, along with the eight teachers and administrators of the Salugpungan Ta ‘Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center and the Community Technical College of Southeastern Mindanao, and two from the Alliance of Concerned Teachers liable for the “child abuse” of Salugpongan students in Talaingod in 2018.
This is in reference to the accused’s accompaniment of the Salugpongan students in their evacuation after the Lumad students faced military and paramilitary harassment in the Salugpongan campus in Sitio Dulyan, which later on led to the forcible closure of Lumad schools during Duterte’s administration.
In a press statement by Ocampo and Castro, they contend that the decision ignored the testimonies regarding the aforementioned harassment of military forces that endangered the welfare of the indigenous students as well as human rights defenders. It was out of this fear that they were prompted to leave the community for a safer area. The eighteen people called “Talaingod 18” by Lumad advocates, were previously acquitted of trafficking and kidnapping charges related to this incident.
A history of red-tagging in Lumad schools and its advocates
Salugpongan Schools was established in 2007 to serve as a formal learning institution that provides basic education to the Manobo and was accredited by the Department of Education.
In 2009, they encountered their first red-tagging incident from the 60th Infantry Battalion. The soldiers that arrived in Sitio Dulyan tagged the school as “fake” and the teachers and a nurse as “Communists”.
In 2014, military deployments and operations in Talaingod continued to harass its residents. Thus, the Davao del Norte DepEd division officer urges the 68th Infantry Battalion to spare the Salugpongan schools from military operations after complaints were raised by school administrators of soldiers “residing near the school and establishing patrol bases”.
From 2016 to 2017, Salugpongan students, Alibando Tingkas and Obello Bay-ao were murdered by the paramilitary Almara. Until then, numerous military attacks continued to terrorize Lumad schools.
It was in November 2018 when the Talaingod 18, led by Satur Ocampo and France Castro, headed to rescue the students and teachers in the Salugpongan campus in Sitio Dulyan who fled after the paramilitary Almara forcibly closed their schools. They were granted bail but as their 6-year battle for this case resurfaces in the present time, Satur and Castro are convicted with “other forms of child abuse” charges by the Tagum City Regional Trial Court Branch 2.
The DepEd Region 11 has already issued its final resolution for the closure of 54 Salugpungan schools in 2019, stating that its curriculum teaches “ideologies that advocate against the government” and does not comply with DepEd standards.
As such, Ocampo and Rep. Castro, along with human rights defenders and Lumad advocates, strongly condemn the fascist attacks of the Marcos regime and former Duterte administration that deprive the indigenous people of their right to education and protection of ancestral lands. The counterinsurgency missions that are weaponized by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) must be put to halt and the lives that are annihilated at its expense should obtain rightful justice.
