KARAPATAN and HUSTISYA (Victims United for Justice) expressed their solidarity with the families, friends and comrades of the victims of the Lianga massacre who have continued to demand justice and accountability for their killings for more than a decade.
Eleven years ago, on September 1, 2015, under the regime of Benigno Aquino III, three Lumad leaders were brutally killed by elements of the Magahat paramilitary group in collusion with the 36th IB and the Special Forces Regiment of the Philippine Army. The victims were Emerito Samarca, director of Alcadev, a secondary school for Lumad children; Dionel Campos, leader of Malahutayong Pakigbisog alang sa Sumusunod (MAPASU), a Lumad organization active in the fight against large-scale mining in Surigao del Sur; and Manobo leader, Datu Juvello Sinzo.
There have been two more presidents since the Lianga Massacre was perpetrated, yet there has been no justice for Emerito Samarca, Dionel Campos and Juvello Sinzo.
Instead, under Duterte, there were 11 massacre incidents. Under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., there have been six massacre incidents involving 35 victims just halfway through his term. Massacres and extrajudicial killings have marked every regime since the Lianga Massacre. Not one perpetrator has been held accountable. Injustice and impunity reign supreme.
Said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay, “We see ominous signs under Marcos Jr. that his regime will be unleashing state terror on a wider scale in the face of growing resistance to his big-ticket projects like Pax Silica, which he is implementing in cahoots with US military-industrial enterprises. There may be more repressive acts on the horizon like the Lianga Massacre, which was perpetrated to quell the Lumad and peasants’ resistance to the encroachment of large-scale mining into ancestral and farmlands in Mindanao,” she added. “In the case of Pax Silica, it will involve the seizure of farms as well as the ancestral lands of the Aeta tribespeople, and drain our country’s mineral wealth. Even now, the affected communities are already showing defiance.”
HUSTISYA spokesperson Atty. VJ Topacio, whose elderly parents, retired NDFP consultants Agaton Topacio and Eugenia Magpantay were gunned down in their home in November 2020, said, “We will not relent in seeking justice for the victims of the Lianga Massacre, just as we will never tire of demanding accountability from the perpetrators of all other forms of state violence. And we will boldly face the scaled-up attacks on the people’s rights and continue demanding justice for the downtrodden. Our cry: Justice for the victims of the Lianga Massacre! Justice for all victims of state violence!”