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Police, Talaingod officials whisk 13 Lumad bakwit students to Davao
Representatives of the SOS Network Cebu and the Children’s Legal Bureau talk to a Cebu Pacific Airlines employee at the Cebu airport (Photo from CLB Facebook post)
MANILA – Thirteen Lumad students had been flown to Davao from Cebu City this evening, almost a week after police and social workers took them from the bakwit school at the University of San Carlos-Talamban campus in Cebu.
The Save Our Schools Network (SOS) Cebu protested the transfer and called it “illegal transport of minors,” because seven of the 13 students were transported without authorization from their parents or order from court.
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Published February 17, 2021, 2:32 PM
CEBU CITY – The presence of the Lumad children from Davao del Norte in a retreat house of a university here had the permission of their parents.
This was the claim of the Save Our Schools (SOS) Network Cebu, which facilitated the Lumad children’s stay in Cebu as members of the Lumad Bakwit school.
University of the Philippines-Cebu Professor Regletto Imbong, convenor of Save of Schools (SOS) Network-Cebu, alleged that the continued destruction of ancestral lands and the purported abuses suffered by Lumads for being the source of recruitment of the New People’s Army forced them to flee from their communities.
SunStar February 17, 2021
(UPDATED, with latest details) Various groups under Save Our Schools (SOS) Network Cebu are calling for the immediate release of 26 Lumads or indigenous people (IP) from Davao del Norte who they claim were “illegally seized” by police authorities in an SVD-owned retreat house at the University of San Carlos-Talamban campus (USC-TC) on Monday, Feb. 15, 2021.
The SOS Network Cebu, composed of church-based groups, academic institutions, militant organizations, and members of civil society said while disguised as a rescue operation to save indigenous children allegedly held in the USC campus without their parents’ consent, the police operation was nothing but a “raid” and an “illegal seizure” of the “Lumad 26.”