Last updated 03:27am (Mla time) 07/27/2007
I read the letter of Rocky Dimaculangan, director for public affairs of TVI Resources Development. (“TVI explains side on Canatuan mining row,” Inquirer, 7/5/07)
He was obviously reacting to the reported human rights violations, which the company has been accused of. In his letter, Dimaculangan defended his employer by attacking me, my tribe and our sacred mountain. Dimaculangan’s letter betrays the mind-set of the mining industry.
TVI has been in our ancestral domain for only 13 years and yet its employees, like Dimaculangan, have readily arrogated unto themselves the authority to identify who our tribal leaders are and which ancestral grounds are hallowed to us. In those 13 years, TVI security forces have declared themselves as the sole authority that can decide on who among the Subanons can “enter” Mt. Canatuan. For example, they ask me to produce a permit or gate pass to enter my own tribe’s domain. They have accosted and hurt my daughter for traversing “TVI roads.”
I understand Dimaculangan’s gall in claiming that Mt. Canatuan is not sacred. One cannot hold something sacred if his pay depends on that something being ravaged. The same holds true for Dimaculangan’s so-called tribal leaders, who he claims gave their consent in exchange for royalties and employment.
Perhaps, Dimaculangan has not been informed that his superiors Yulo Perez, TVI’s vice president for operations, and Feliz Yeban, TVI’s vice president for social commitment, refer to me as “Timuay” (tribal chief), especially now that TVI has applied for a license to expand its operations inside our ancestral domain. Our traditional tribal leadership structure is the one recognized by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. As such, our tribal council’s “free, prior and informed consent” is needed by TVI for its planned expansion.
Last June 17, Yeban came to woo our council at the tribal hall of the Apu Manglang Glupa Pusaka, where I hold court as the direct blood descendant of Apu Manglang. In asking for our consent, she asked forgiveness for the human rights violations that TVI committed in the past and promised that such abuses will not happen again.
Dimaculangan should be guided accordingly.
TIMUAY JOSE BOY ANOY, tribal chieftain, Apu Manglang Glupa Pusaka, Barangay Candiz, Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte
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