Talaingod 18 activists sentenced to more than eight years in prison

The deputies Satur Ocampo and France Castro were sentenced along with 12 other people to sentences ranging from four years and nine months to eight years and eight months. Four other defendants were acquitted due to lack of evidence. The defense considers that it is an “incorrect” sentence because they acted in defense of the (tribal) students attacked by the paramilitaries. The appeal will be filed immediately.

Milan () – A court in the city of Tagum, on the island of Mindanao, handed down its verdict this morning in the trial of 18 defendants, including two well-known opposition politicians. Former senator and current House of Representatives deputy Satur Ocampo and his colleague France Castro were sentenced along with 12 other people to a minimum prison sentence of four years and nine months and a maximum of eight years and eight months. Four other defendants, three religious leaders and an activist, were acquitted due to lack of evidence.

Today’s arrest, trial and sentencing stemmed from the group’s attempt to bring students to safety from a school that, like some 58 other schools in the region, was about to be closed and the students deported elsewhere by the paramilitaries. On November 27, 2018, Ocampo, Castro and the others, including many teachers, tried to bring 14 students from the Salungpungan School in Talaingod, which is attended by tribal youth from different areas, including as far away, to a safer area. The move comes in the context of the plight of the indigenous Lumad population in the Talaingod area of ​​Davao del Norte province.

Paramilitary groups created by the army to counter the presence of armed militants from the New People’s Army (NPA) operate in this region. These paramilitaries have been harassing villages and institutions for years, including schools created to provide education to tribal youth but which are considered to support the insurgents. The situation has been denounced several times by international organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), but it persists due to the lack of interest of the authorities and the fear of reprisals. Testimonies confirmed that the military commandos not only favoured the birth of formations such as Magahat and Alamara, which terrorise tribal and indigenous populations, but often openly support operations which, rather than eradicating the communist-inspired guerrilla, tend to make ancestral territories accessible to mining companies and other economic interests.

The pressure is constant and sometimes brutal. On August 26, 2015, for example, the village of White Kulaman in Bukidnon province was invaded. Regular troops arrested 17 residents, accusing them of having transformed the Mindanao Interfaith School Foundation Academy, founded by the Italian missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), Father Fausto Tentorio, into a support center for the NPA guerrillas. He was killed in the Arakan mission on September 11, 2011, after decades of pastoral activity and human promotion among the tribal people.

In Talingod, local civil and educational authorities denied that the school was a base for activities other than those for which it was founded and that the activists’ action had subversive or criminal aims. Nevertheless, these 18 people were initially charged with kidnapping, abuse and human trafficking, although this last charge was dropped.

After the sentence was read, the lawyer for the accused, Carlos Zárate, said that “the solidarity mission of those days was transformed into a rescue mission because they were being persecuted by the paramilitaries.” And the accusation of having endangered the lives of the students with their humanitarian action will be refuted on appeal. “This unjust sentence shows the constant persecution of those who support and promote the rights of Lumad children and the continuous attacks against Lumad schools and communities,” said Ocampo and Castro in a joint statement.