'Death at 4:30 pm'
Silencing the opposition to mining in the Philippines

Since gaining power in 2001, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has aggressively pushed a 'revitalisation of mining' programme even though it mainly benefits transnational and foreign interests. Activists who resist mining because of the lack of benefits to local communities or on environmental grounds face intimidation or death.

Brad Miller

THE chaos of the public market reeks with the smell of durian fruit, fresh fish and bloody, fly-covered meat. Motorised tricycles spew carbon monoxide, turning any white clothing worn by shoppers a few shades darker.

The vendor at one of the newspaper stands always seems to be smiling as he offers up a national or local daily in English, Tagalog or the regional dialect recalling the grisly events of the day - a bombing in Cotabato, a stabbing in Surigao.  Tomorrow the headlines will announce the death of Eliezer 'Boy' Billanes, 46, who was shot as he bought a newspaper from the smiling vendor this afternoon.

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'The state uses the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] to harass and intimidate those against mining,' said Billanes in a January 2008 interview.

After Billanes was gunned down last 9 March across from the public market in Koronadal City (Marbel) in South Cotabato province on the island of Mindanao, various political and religious organisations comprising the Justice for Billanes Coalition have been echoing his sentiments, saying his murder was carried out by military intelligence units or the security forces of a multinational mining firm.

Billanes was an outspoken environmental and political activist and Chair of SOCCSKSARGENDS-Alliance for Genuine Development, an organisation working to block Sagittarius Mines, Inc.(SMI)/Xstrata from developing an open-pit mine. Two men aboard a 200cc Honda motorcycle approached him in front of the newspaper stand, the passenger shooting him once in the head at close range with a .45 calibre pistol. The assassination took place at 4:30 pm, when the market is full of shoppers and vehicles, within 100 metres of the city police station.

'Revitalisation of mining' programme

The Swiss, British and Australian-owned SMI/Xstrata has held the concession for the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project since 2002, where they hope to start tapping into what could be one of the  biggest copper deposits in South-East Asia.

But the project has been plagued by labour unrest, a costly 1 January 2008 attack by a group of heavily-armed New People's Army (NPA) insurgents and continued local opposition due to concerns over potential environmental damage, the displacement of tribal B'laan communities and the militarisation of the area.

'It is the national policy of the state that whenever there is a mining corporation entering there is a military operation to clear the area,' Billanes said in 2008, and in turn, the 'AFP uses the private security of transnationals as a partner in the anti-insurgency campaign'.

 The regime of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the mining corporations have used any means necessary to secure mineral-laden real estate and convince locals to back their projects - whether it is through monetary 'gifts', coercion, the manipulation of tribal elections or blatant armed force.  Since gaining power in 2001, Macapagal-Arroyo has pushed her 'revitalisation of mining' programme, coupling a 'Peace and Development' strategy with the Oplan Bantay Laya counterinsurgency strikes in areas that are rich in natural resources.  Progressives define it as 'development aggression', meant only to clear out insurgents and any tribal people or farmers that oppose mining or other corporate invasions.  Documents of the Mineral Development Council show that Arroyo issued Executive Order 270 on 16 January 2004, which shifted the national policy from tolerating mineral extraction to aggressively promoting the investment of foreign mining firms.  Father Roming Catedral, Director of the Diocese of Marbel's Social Action Center (SAC), says Macapagal-Arroyo is 'manipulating different government agencies to toe her line and even bypass laws'.

After the New Year's Day NPA raid, SMI/Xstrata contracted Catena of Group Four Securicor to guard their infrastructure.  The mining firm has also signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the three municipal mayors of Kiblawan (Davao del Sur), Tampakan (South Cotabato) and Colombio (Sultan Kudarat) as well as some B'laan tribal leaders, creating the KITACO Growth Area in the same location as the SMI/Xstrata concession.  One of KITACO's goals is developing the area for investment, including 'the activities of area investors such as SMI to promote sustainable mineral development'.  It will also 'improve peace and order', with provisions for the Philippine National Police (PNP) to cross provincial and municipal borders to pursue suspects.

According to Lt. Colonel Joshua Santiago, Commanding Officer of the 27th Infantry Battalion (IB) in nearby Tupi, the local governments in the 'growth area' have set up a special security group called 'Task Force KITACO', composed of Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) militia.  Santiago says that CAFGU members are being allowed to work for Catena in their 'off hours' as a way to 'give them additional livelihood'.

In a 17 March statement, SMI's General Manager Mark Williams claims the company and its security forces have 'no connection to the death of Mr Billanes'. Williams also said that 'SMI staff and representatives from our security contractors underwent two days of training on the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights in 2008, organised by Business for Social Responsibility'.

Billanes, who was also the Secretary-General of the South Cotabato People's Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy, maintained that they are 'not against mining per se', but that 'mining should be nationalised first, controlled by the state' instead of 'controlled and owned by foreign corporations'.

As an environmentalist, he was concerned with the impact an open-pit method of extraction would cause, and that any form of mining should be banned in ecologically-critical areas such as watersheds, protected areas and sensitive island ecosystems.  Billanes was strongly opposed to the presence of the 27th IB in his barrio, and his name surfaced on an alleged target list of the Intelligence Services of the AFP, along with four other activists, including Gilbert Cardeno of the political party Bayan Muna. The Diocese's Justice and Peace (JP) desk says Cardeno was abducted and interrogated by government intelligence agents and was asked to reveal the names of militants and other information concerning activist groups.

Santiago says that the militant left claims the 27th IB is 'part of SMI'. 'That is not true,' he retorts. 'Anyone who wants to invest in the area will be protected, since it is Philippine territory.' SMI's Williams notes, however, that in 2009 'further training is scheduled for SMI's private security contractor and Philippine Army officers deployed in the SMI project area will also be invited to participate.'

Santiago also denies the AFP liquidated Billanes. 'We are not involved in any extra-judicial killing.'

Civilian-military operations

Even if the military didn't directly pull the trigger, activists and church leaders feel the AFP's civilian-military operations (CMOs) could have been as lethal as a bullet to Boy Billanes.

'There is no line of defence,' says Santiago.  In what he describes as a war without boundaries, the 27th IB is conducting CMOs called pulong pulong sessions in his area of jurisdiction, which includes the concession of SMI/Xstrata and Dole's pineapple plantation, to 'immerse with the people and know who are maybe connected with the communists', and also to 'educate' people to 'protect the community against the infiltration of communists.  We go and explain that these groups are usually providing aid to the communists.'

The military has labelled groups like Bayan Muna and the women's rights advocates of Gabriela as 'red'.  Santiago and the 27th IB have specifically targeted the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) labour union, which has strong support among the 5,000 workers at Dole's pineapple plantation in Polomolok, 20 km south of Tupi.

'The KMU has representatives that provide logistical aid and money,' he says, 'given to the NPA for firearms and ammo to kill us.'  Santiago says the AFP is 'solving this insurgency as peacefully as possible'.

Some residents have complained that the CMOs have been used to harass anyone with anti-mining sentiments, as have the household surveys being conducted in the barrios.  South Cotabato Governor Daisy Fuentes has stated the communities are being surveyed to find out who supports the NPA.

In a 4 March civilian-military dialogue attended by the Bishop of the Diocese of Marbel Dinualdo Gutierrez and Governor Fuentes, among others, it was clarified that Colonel Rainer Cruz, Commander of the 1002nd Brigade, instructed his officers to organise Barangay Defence Systems (BDS) in the communities.  BDSs are controlled by the barangay (barrio) officials and are armed with their own personal weapons to protect their villages, but the system has come under criticism in certain parts of Mindanao by local residents.  Some fear their involvement in the government programme could make them targets of the NPA, while others have complained that they have been forced to leave their farms unattended in order to participate in BDS patrols.

Rene Pamplona of the SAC says that the BDS that has formed in Tampakan is becoming a 'true paramilitary unit'. 'They are being encouraged to use their guns against the communists,' he says, but as with other paramilitaries, may 'take action for their own purposes'. According to Pamplona, on 19 March, there was a gathering of as many as 500 people in the Tampakan town square in support of the BDS.  Participants brandished signs proclaiming activists and progressive organisations to be 'communists'.

The Catholic Church, leaders of human rights groups and labour organisers say these activities have tagged them as NPA supporters, or even members, and have left them even more vulnerable to attacks from fanatical anti-communist elements.

In a statement of condemnation, Sister Pat Babiera, JP desk Coordinator, stated that Billanes was one of the 'many personalities tagged' and 'had received numerous death threats before his assassination'.

At Billanes' funeral on 23 March, Bishop Gutierrez lambasted both the AFP and Philippine Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Lito Atienza for calling anyone opposed to mining 'communists and terrorists'.

'We will be subject to harassment or even killing,' he said.

Militarisation

The military presence in and around SMI/Xstrata's Tampakan Copper-Gold Project isn't new.  In the 1990s, when the concession was owned by Australia's Western Mining Corporation Philippines (WMCP), the 25th IB conducted operations in areas of mining opposition, ostensibly to root out the NPA, Muslim separatists, cattle bandits, marijuana growers and illegal loggers.  But in a letter sent to the Commission on Human Rights, the JP desk said that they and other anti-mining activists were being harassed by the military and paramilitaries, with B'laan villages being raised and sacked. The AFP's manoeuvres in the town of Salnaong began in the fall of 1998, after the B'laan were issued documents certifying land ownership and had drawn up an Ancestral Domain Management Plan that noted the JP desk's opposition to WMCP's activities. 

 And SMI/Xstrata's is not the only mining concession to become a militarised zone. In Canatuan, Zamboanga del Norte, Canadian-owned TVI Resource Development Philippines, Inc. has deployed SCAA (Special CAFGU Active Auxiliary) militia, who are trained by the AFP and then assigned to businesses who request their protection.  On 26 June  2006, 100 SCAA of TVI seriously wounded four members of the Canatuan Farmers Association when they demolished houses, bulldozed crops and confronted the group, striking them with fists and batons.  An earlier incident of violence occurred in March 2004, when TVI's SCAA fired their automatic weapons into a group of protesters that had formed a blockade, wounding four people.

Most of TVI's SCAA security are native Subanons, a situation that further polarises the tribal community.  This divisive tactic has also been used by SMI/Xstrata's security firm Catena, who reportedly hired 100 B'laan from around Tampakan. Also, while SMI/Xstrata has invested a substantial amount of pesos into the area, its 'gifts' of money and community development projects have forced tribal members to choose to stand on one side of the mining issue or the other, with some opting to back the mining company out of the need to survive. 

One of the B'laan that chose survival is tribal chieftain Juanito Malid, who previously opposed the entry of SMI/Xstrata, but now works for the company. Whether his conversion was achieved with monetary incentives, promises of badly needed community development or the realisation that an anti-mining stance would only get him gunned down, as his brother Gurilmin Malid was in 2002, may only be known to him.  But it has been standard practice for the Philippine government and mining companies to manipulate tribal elections to ensure the service of pro-mining leaders, and as the Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao notes, this has adulterated the traditional system of tribal rule and sown disunity in the communities.

'Far-fetched' theory

The hour hasn't yet reached noon, but it's up around 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  Lt. Colonel Santiago is dressed in full camos and drinking hot coffee, but he isn't sweating. 

While the AFP says it cannot prove that Boy Billanes had any involvement with the NPA, Santiago says 'we suspect' that 'it is a possibility.'  They say they are pursuing their own investigation from the angle that he was either killed by these armed elements of the left or that it was 'fellow members in his organisation' that 'are the mastermind of that killing', possibly over a disagreement in their respective agendas.

But the JP desk calls this theory 'far-fetched', since there weren't any inter-organisational conflicts serious enough to warrant his murder.

At their home in their barrio, where Boy Billanes' family prepares a meal of spaghetti to celebrate the graduation of his youngest son from pre-school, his wife Emelia insists her husband had no connection to the armed left - that he was killed for his vocal anti-mining activism.  Billanes' father Barcelino paces back and forth, visibly upset, asking 'why small people like Boy was killed?...if he did something wrong, formal cases should be filed against him so he can answer.'

Sister Pat underlines his anger in her statement that 'the right to life is a gift for everybody; no one has the right to take it.  The wheel of justice is the proper venue for the resolution of any case.'

The killing of Boy Billanes has spread some fear through the anti-mining opposition, but their efforts to resist the corporate and military pressure continue.

The Provincial Board of South Cotabato has been in a long process of preparing an environmental code that would prohibit large-scale open-pit mines such as the one proposed by SMI/Xstrata, but the Board's Chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Joe Madanguit, says the national government and Secretary Atienza have been pressuring them to omit the ban clause from their final draft.

Madanguit says the pressure has lessened recently.  He attributes this to the economic slowdown and growing anti-mining sentiment, but he also says the proposed ban may now end up being  'qualified', opposing open-pit mining only in ecologically-sensitive areas like watersheds, and possibly allowing it in others.

Madanguit hopes to pass the environmental code by July, and is still convinced that open-pit mining would be detrimental to Tampakan, especially after touring the destruction caused by Benguet's gold mine in Luzon.

'You just have to see it to know what 106 years of mining means,' he laments.

Also, the town council of Tampakan is debating a proposed resolution that would put a 10-year moratorium on any mining within their municipal boundary.

The Diocese of Marbel and other environmentally-concerned groups organised two consecutive rallies to coincide with Earth Day celebrations.  On 22 April, a protest was held to oppose the planned construction of a coal-fired power plant in Maasim, Sarangani province, while the next day people gathered in Koronadal City to call for the repeal of the current Mining Act, which allows 100% foreign ownership of businesses and a total repatriation of profits, and to support an Alternative Mining Bill.

Bishop Gutierrez says that 'we will oppose destructive mining until the end of the world.'

Will justice be served?

The NPA Far Southern Mindanao Region has vowed vengeance for Billanes' death, saying they 'will not rest until justice is served', and at the end of April the insurgents'  National Democratic Front put out 'arrest warrants' for top SMI/Xstrata executives and several AFP officers, including Lt. Colonel Joshua Santiago, for the murder of Boy Billanes.

But Task Force Billanes, the unit formed to solve his murder, is 'facing a blank wall', says the PNP's Robert Kiunisala, South Cotabato's provincial police chief. So others, like a distant relative of Billanes named Chris, are more resigned to the fact that justice may not come to pass.

 The United Nations' Human Rights Council has documented over 800 extra-judicial killings since President Macapagal-Arroyo took office in 2001, with a majority of the cases remaining unsolved.

'It is just something that the family will have to accept,' Chris says, 'that this is the way it is under this administration.'

 Lodenio Monson, Chair of the farmers organisation called Nagkahiusang Maguuma sa Boston, may have been one of the latest victims of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime's 'revitalisation of mining' programme.  Monson was shot to death on 29 April in Davao Oriental province by a lone motorcycle-riding gunman.  He had been receiving death threats since last year and was told he was on a military intelligence report for supporting the NPA.  He had also been a vocal opponent of mining - until he was silenced.                      

Brad Miller is a freelance journalist who is currently reporting for Inter Press Service from the Philippines. He has also written for Pacific News Service, the Progressive, Cultural Survival Quarterly's Weekly Indigenous News and other publications.

*Third World Network No. 225, May 2009, pp 18-21