Baguio Midland Courier, February 7, 2010
“The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples is the government agency mandated to protect the rights of the indigenous people but it is the one violating the rights of the IPs by grabbing our land.”
“If such is the case, we might as well not have an NCIP,” said members of the heirs of Mateo Cariño who are crying foul over the injustice that the NCIP has done to the descendants of the person the NCIP recognizes as father of native land titles.
Joanna Cariño said that the NCIP is the cause of the division of IP families not only in the region but nationwide.
She claims that the recent resolution of the NCIP awarding the title over the claim of the heirs of Bayosa Ortega Cariño to the heirs of Ikang Paus is a direct proof of the land grabbing that the commission does to the indigenous people.
“We have documents to prove our claim. We have gone through the process and even questioned the earlier resolution showing proofs of our rights, but the NCIP did not even bother to study our motions.”
The award to the Paus’, she said, is questionable, since even the statements averred in the application of the heir are questionable and do not have any basis. “They are changing the history of the place as well as the culture by saying that they lived in an area which is now called Otek Street. They also claim to have affiliation with Bayosa Cariño.”
Linda Cariño added, “It is very unlikely for a woman of the 1900s to have children outside of her marriage, which the Paus have mentioned in their application.”
They said that “injustice has been perpetrated against the Cariño clan by no less than the very institution that has been created to protect indigenous peoples’ rights - the NCIP. The NCIP has wrongfully awarded the area known as the dairy farm, Bureau of Animal Industry to the heirs of Ikang Paus, notwithstanding the fraudulence of their claim, with complete disregard for the earlier and legitimate claim of the heirs of Mateo and Bayosa Cariño over said area, and in direct violation of their own rules and procedures.”
The Paus claim, they said, was spurious from the start. The certification for the Paus’ was “revoked and recalled for being patently illegal, a gross misrepresentation and in direct violation of the (undersigned) memorandum.”
They added that while the processing of their ancestral claim over the property was painfully slow, the Paus claim, which had already been declared illegitimate by the former NCIP chairman, was suddenly unearthed and approved by the present NCIP en banc in an unbelievably fast manner, they said.
“The Paus claim was suddenly transmitted from the NCIP ancestral domain office to the Baguio office with instruction to fast track the processing of the application, which is a clear violation of the NCIP’s own guidelines that processes of filing should start at the local office which was why we had to refile our claim at the Baguio office notwithstanding that our files have been with the NCIP since 1999, and with the DENR since 1990.”
The heirs said that within a period of two weeks, the resurrected claims had been completed, processed, and endorsed by the NCIP Baguio to the NCIP commission en banc. “We were not informed about this nor were we accorded due process.”
With the issues raised, the heirs are “calling upon the city council to launch an inquiry in aid of legislation into the Baguio dairy farm award.”
They also raised the issue that aside from specific cases within Baguio City, numerous alarming reports of likewise questionable transactions of the NCIP in other IP areas, such as the aetas in Subic, the mangyans of Mindoro, and non-Muslim natives in Mindanao. “We are told that real estate developers and subdivision owners are ever present at the NCIP offices following up ancestral land claims of indigenous peoples.”
“We are calling for a Congressional inquiry and even a Senate inquiry in aid of legislation into all actions of the NCIP,” the Cariño heirs said.
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