RESPECT OUR DEAD!

IP burial, sacred sites face destruction, study shows

MAIN STORIES July 24, 2016, | http://www.panaynewsphilippines.com/archives/2016/07/24/respect-ourdead-ip-burial-sacred-sites-face-destruction-study-shows/

ILOILO City The construction of the Jalaur River

mega dam could desecrate the burial grounds and
sacred sites of the indigenous peoples (IP) in central
Panay Island, according to a research conducted by
two University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV)
graduates.
The study, Necropolitics: Panays Tumandok Burial
Grounds and the Jalaur Multipurpose Project Phase II
(JRMP II), identified five IP burial grounds and one
sacred site in Calinog, Iloilo that will be destroyed.
According to researchers Mar Anthony Balani and
Jude Mangilog, nine IP communities will be totally submerged to make way for
the mega dam.
Balani and Mangilogs study, which the two fulfilled on May 2016 as their
undergraduate political science thesis requirement at the UPV Department of
Social Sciences under the advisorship of Prof. Tomasito Talledo, was
presented during the International Fact-Finding and Solidarity Mission to
Panay (IFFSM-Panay) held from July 16 to 18, 2016 in Calinog, Iloilo and
Tapaz, Capiz.
Burial grounds that will be submerged once the dam is finished include those
in Sitio Sakalon in the boundary of barangays Agcalaga and Alibunan, Sitio
Balikan in Barangay Garangan, the concrete public cemetery in Barangay
Garangan, and the Bukay Isda sacred site in the Jalaur River itself in
Agcalaga, according t the study.
The burial grounds in Sitio Kabuyan, Barangay Masaroy as well as the public
cemetery in Barangay Masaroy will meanwhile be destroyed by road
construction, it added.
Balani and Mangilog conducted interviews with IP elders as key informants,
personnel of offices in-charge of the construction of the Jalaur River

Multipurpose Project Stage II (JRMP-II), identified and mapped of burial

grounds, and made close reading of international and domestic laws during
the research and experiences on the protection of sacred sites.
Citing IP accounts, the study estimated that each burial ground may have at
least between 30 to 50 to more than 100 buried people.
We

respect our dead. Our dead will condemn us if we agree that they be
desecrated, an informant told the researchers in Kinaray-a.
The burial grounds were marked by the planting of bamboo and gumamela
while the Bukay Isda was a whitish fish-shaped stone in the center of the
Jalaur where the IPs performed their rituals.
The study concluded that the mega dam project is an example of
development aggression against the IP, with the destruction of burial
grounds committed by government agencies violating existing international
laws, agreements, and jurisprudence particularly the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, International Labor
Organization Convention No. 107 in 1957, and International Labor
Organization Convention No. 169 in 1991.
We

will really be affected. If our burial grounds are destroyed, our culture will
be affected. The continuity and tradition of our family will be destroyed. Our
burial grounds are remembrances of our respect to our dead family relatives
and ancestors, another IP informant told the researchers in Kinaray-a.
The study cited the case of the Awas Tingni indigenous peoples who won a
case in the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in 1998 against Nicaragua,
which was sued for granting the Korean company Sol de Caribe S.A. a permit
for the exploitation of 62,000 hectares of tropical forests falling within the
ancestral domain of the Awas Tingni.
Another is the 1994 Hopu and Bessert indigenous peoples case in the
Human Rights Committee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights against France which planned to build a luxury hotel complex in the
formers ancestral grounds.
The IFFSM-Panay is organized by the Jalaur River for the Peoples
Movement, an alliance of environmental advocates, peoples organizations,
church people, members of the academe and indigenous peoples
organizations./PN