By John Din, Columban Lay Missionary

John Din, from San Miguel, Zamboanga del Sur, is the Coordinator of Columban Lay Missionares – Philippines, a position he took last year after spending almost 18 years as a Columban Lay Missionary in Brazil and Peru.

First there was the forest, then the loggers came; bare lands appeared and mining companies came. What next? This idea was on my mind when I revisited Midsalip in January 2011 to make a short video on the struggle of the indigenous Subanens and the people of Midsalip, Zamboanga del Sur against mining. My first visit to Midsalip was in the 1987 together with a group from our parish during the picket against logging companies. This visit and the participation in the picket at an early age has been the most educative experience about the care of environment in my life.

I attended the court hearings in Aurora and Pagadian City and met with all the accused, among them the Subanen leaders, Columban Sister Patty Andonaire from Peru and Columban Fr Sean Martin from Ireland. The mining company had filed a criminal and civil case against them.

I spent a night in the picket area in Guinabot, Midsalip, and interviewed Ricardo Tolino, one of the Subanen leaders and respondent to the case. The fruit of this interview is the video Pagmina o Kasiguroan sa Pagkaon ug Kaugmaon? (Mining or Food and Future Security?).

InJuly the Mining Company managed to get a Temporary Restraining Order that forced the picketers to abandon the proposed mining area. The drilling has started. The struggle now is to support the Writ of Kalikasan for the Zamboanga Peninsula.

The Writ of Kalikasan is defined by the Supreme Court as a ‘remedy available to a natural or juridical person, an entity authorized by law, people’s organization, non-governmental organization, or any public interest group accredited by or registered with any government agency, on behalf of persons whose constitutional right to a balanced and healthful ecology is violated, or threatened with violation by an unlawful act or omission of a public official or employee, or private individual or entity, involving environmental damage of such magnitude as to prejudice the life, health or property of inhabitants in two or more cities or provinces’. (Rules of Procedure for Environmental Cases A.M. No. 09-6-8-SC Rule 7, Sec. 1)

I was assigned for seven years in Brazil and eleven in Peru. Both of these countries have gone through the same pattern of destruction, first sending people to large areas of virgin forest, then come the loggers, the cattle ranchers and, finally, the mining companies. Forests were denuded at tremendous speed, driving the indigenous people to death and to nowhere. After the timber was cut, the vicious cycle continuous; greedy corporate interest to minerals, digging open pit mines, rerouting, contaminating and killing rivers. A desolate land, dried rivers, tons of poisonous mercury and cyanide were left to replace what were once lungs of the earth.

Amidst this destruction, human communities continue to produce unknown martyrs in defense of the forest and the indigenous people, among them Chico Mendes, murdered in 1988, and Sr Dorothy Mae Stang SND in 2005.

Returning to the Philippines after almost 18 years of being away as a Columban Lay Missionary I can see the Philippines hasn’t escaped from this pattern of ‘development’. Mining companies have spent millions in propaganda to present what they do as responsible ‘clean’ mining, hiring private security guards, bribing, it is alleged, national and local government officials to promote their interests. The Philippines has produced many martyrs too, including journalists, NGO leaders, priests and religious and lay people.

You may email John Din at clmssc_phil@yahoo.com

Orignal: http://columbanlaymissionaries-philippines.blogspot.com/2011/11/vicious-cycle-of-destruction.html