Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 2.1: Local Community Assistance
121
The same local army units maliciously labelled members of the CPA and
their local affiliates as fronts of the armed New Peoples Army. Starting
June 1 in Poblacion, the military posted flyers in the rice granaries with
a listing of all alleged “terrorist fronts,” which included the CPA. This
created a climate of fear and terror in the community. Such branding of
organizations and community leaders makes them enemies of the state.
Human rights groups have attested that in practices, this gives the military
a license to attack and violate the rights of civilians and communities,
whose activities to defend their ancestral land and resources are just and
legitimate.
In yet another desperate attempt to swing the communities’ prevailing and
official stance to the issues at hand, Olympus started deploying their own
“community organizers” to the communities.
Community Resolve
In spite of all this pressure, however, the communities’ resolve to protect
their ancestral domain temporarily stopped Olympus’ attempts to continue
its operations in Capcapo. This was done through collective decision
making, using traditional methods of democratic consensus building.
The original Mineral Sharing Production Agreements still exist,
however, meaning the companies can continue exerting pressure on
the communities if the financial conditions are more favorable. The
militarization also continued, as Abra province was declared a priority area
for the Philippine government’s counter-insurgency operations. The CPA
has been monitoring ground developments on large mining and military
deployment with BALITOK and KASTAN.
The CPA was able to support the communities via capacity building to
sustain the communities’ assertion of their individual and collective human
rights. This comprised activities such as education and training, learning
exchanges with other mining affected communities in Benguet province,
media work and supportive networking. The international community
also supported the communities by responding to the Action Alert CPA
circulated, and by sending letters of concern to the Philippine president,
concerned government agencies, and the Olympus head office in Canada.
Dreaded Duo
What is clear is that where there are mining operations, there are human
rights violations. As in other flashpoint areas of mining struggles in