IPs Act After 3 Years of Negotiations for Illegal Squatter to Leave Ancestral Domain
Officers and members of the Siocon Subanon Association, Inc. (SSAI) advise that they have dismantled the unoccupied shanty of a holdover small-scale miner (SSM) couple who had refused to leave the Ancestral Domain and Canatuan Project area of TVI Resource Development Philippines, Inc. (TVIRD) despite lengthy negotiations, safety concerns, and repeated requests for the couple either to join the new Subanon community or to vacate the Ancestral Domain area that their shanty was unlawfully occupying. SSAI – legal representative of the Subanon indigenous people (IP) ancestral domain title holders in Canatuan, Siocon Zamboanga del Norte – had expressed concern for the safety of the couple, as the area where their shanty stood was right in the middle of the current mining operations.
Timuay Erdulfo Comisas, SSAI official and member of the tribal Council of Elders as well as of the official stakeholder Multi-partite Monitoring Team, mobilized the all-Subanon team that dismantled the shanty of the non-indigenous people (IPs) who were part of the approximately 2,000 household-strong illegal SSM community that mushroomed in Canatuan and the Ancestral Domain in the late `90s.
“We wish to tell the world that after two years of patient negotiations and due process with these people, even inviting them to join our community though they are non-IPs squatting in our Ancestral Domain, we felt it was time to exercise our rights,” Comisas said. Their shanty was posing a safety risk and interfering with the activities producing our Royalty (from the mining operations). They were holding out for compensation equal to two whole months of Royalty to the whole Subanon tribe, for land they did not own and trees they did not plant.”
Comisas added: “We believe they were being encouraged and supported to create trouble, by outside NGOs opposed to mining and to our Council. Don’t believe anyone who tells you they were treated unfairly.”
TVIRD holds a Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) with the Philippine government, effective October 23, 1996 and covering an area of 508 hectares within the 6,523-hectare Subanon Ancestral Domain in Canatuan. The company forged an agreement with SSAI for the development of Canatuan.
Even before TVIRD started actual mining operations in mid-2004, the company had begun negotiations with about 150 SSM families to relocate away the mine area primarily for safety reasons. The families have been offered a “disturbance compensation” that is many times higher than those prescribed by the provincial ordinance governing real properties.
TVIRD Canatuan General Manager Yulo Perez explained that “the compensation package is meant to provide the families a good opportunity to earn a decent and lawful living and have a fresh start outside Canatuan.”
Of the 150 SSM families, only about 30 – just five of whom are IPs – remain within the MPSA area.
The company had offered the couple over 13 times the officially assessed value of their shanty and what they claimed as their plants, based on the fair market value of real property in Zamboanga del Norte. TVI had also proposed to bring the couple back to Cagayan de Oro, to their home, and build a house for them there.
The couple were asking for what all observers believed was a deliberately unreasonable figure, and had refused both the SSAI and TVIRD’s offers since negotiations with them began more than three years ago. SSAI had offered the couple the opportunity to join the community in the new town being built for the IPs by TVI. At one point during the negotiations, they admitted they were inside the Ancestral Domain and MPSA area; that they did not plant the few fruit trees around their shanty. The couple had earlier claimed as their own plants that other SSMs had planted before the couple built their shanty.
The couple had not been staying in the shanty for several weeks and instead had been living in the house of another illegal SSM holdover near the mine area. They reportedly own another house in the SSM community outside the mining operations. The couple, who were not home when the Subanon team arrived for the dismantling, rushed to the scene and attempted to inflict bodily harm on the IPs, causing minor injuries.
Comisas said he recommended to lead the dismantling of the shanty during the Multipartite Monitoring Team meeting last June 21 attended by, among others, representatives of the provincial government, the Environmental Management Bureau, and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau.
“It is our right to do what we believe is best for our ancestral land,” Comisas said. He has turned over all of the couple’s belongings to Barangay Chairman Bonifacio Patoh of Barangay Tabayo, LGU host of the Canatuan Project.
Perez, on the other hand, said that “despite this unfortunate development, our company is still willing to sit down with the couple to discuss a reasonable compensation package with them, and to reimburse them for the cost of their shanty.
“For their temporary shelter, we have set aside one room at our employee housing in Pigsolobukan Village, also within Canatuan,” Perez added. “We are also still willing to build another house for the them, in an area acceptable to the indigenous people.”
Comisas, for his part, is offering a piece of his own land where the couple can build a new house.
