By PROF. HENRY FRANCIS B. ESPIRITU
I strongly and vehemently denounce the attack made yesterday by the police (under the dubious pretext of “rescue operation”) against Lumad volunteer teachers and Lumad students who were sheltered in the University of San Carlos (USC), Talamban Campus. Last year, I had the privilege of volunteering as Philosophy teacher for one month (January thru February 2020) to Lumad Junior and Senior High School students who visited UP Cebu under the Lumad Bakwit Program. During our classes, I listened to their stories of military cruelty and learned from them how they were repressed by the oppressive State apparatus in collusion with big mining firms that are out to expropriate and exploit their ancestral lands for these big companies’ greedy and selfish purposes.