GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 24 June) – A Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Quezon City has set the promulgation of a case filed by a group of indigenous peoples in South Cotabato against the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) involving 29,085 hectares of land held by a big coffee corporation under an Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) scheme.
Lawyer Rolly Peoro, direct legal services coordinator of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC), said the continuing mandamus filed by the Taboli-Manobo S’daf Claimants Organization (Tamasco) against the DENR is nearing decision.
This after RTC Quezon City Branch 101 Presiding Judge Evangeline Castillo-Marigomen set the promulgation of the mandamus case on September 1, he added.
The petitioners had urged the DENR to cancel the 29,085-hectare IFMA of M&S Company, Inc.
Peoro explained that a writ of continuing mandamus is one of the special legal remedies in the Supreme Court’s Rules of Procedure on Environmental Cases.
“The mandamus seeks to order unlawfully negligent government agencies or instrumentalities, or their respective officials, to perform acts in fulfillment of their neglected duty,” he said.
Tamasco filed the mandamus case in 2019 against the DENR based on a cease and desist order issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, after the latter supposedly determined that the indigenous peoples did not give their free prior and informed consent to the IFMA coffee plantation of M&S Company.
M&S Company operates the Dawang Coffee Plantation in the mountains of South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat, portion of which Tamasco claimed is under its ancestral domain.
The United Kingdom-based Business and Human Rights Center, which has been working to advance human rights in business, had requested M&S Company to respond to the issue involving the contested IFMA. But the company did not respond.
Datu Dande Dinyan, Tamasco chair, said the promulgation “is a blessing for the tribe as ancestral domain holders.”
Datu Mario Kadingilan, a Dulangan Manobo leader from Maguindanao and another petitioner in the case, said “this is proof that the unity of the various tribes in the IFMA-affected areas is finally coming into fruition.”
“We hope the court immediately expedites the Mandamus against DENR given that M&S’ occupation of our lands has long been deemed illegal,” he said.
Eight Tamasco members, including their leader Datu Victor Danyan, were killed in a military operation against alleged communist rebels in 2017. The families of the victims denied the victims were communist rebels.
International human rights and environment watchdog Global Witness said the alleged massacre was connected to the land struggle, according to a CNN Philippine report. (Bong S. Sarmiento / MindaNews)
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