By CHERYLL D. FIEL
Residents of Pantukan, a coastal town in Compostela Valley province, are locked in battle against two large-scale mining companies attempting to wrest full control of the area’s mineral resources. They also bewail the unfair advantage the government gives to these companies at the expense of small-scale miners.

By GRACE S. UDDIN / Davao Today
Captain Emmanuel Garcia, spokesperson of the 10th ID-AFP, said an undetermined number of rebels attacked soldiers of the 66th Infantry Battalion escorting a group of Board of Election Inspectors (BEI’s) for the canvassing of votes at the municipal hall of Maragusan.

NEWS RELEASE 27 March 2010 A nationwide child rights advocacy group lambasted the military’s false claims in news reports that the 15 year old boy they arrested in Makilala, North Cotabato was allegedly aiding the New People’s Army detonate a bomb in Brgy. Old Balatukan, and another girl arrested by the 25th in Moncayo, Compostela [...]

By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
For the farmers, peasants and indigenous peoples of Southern Mindanao, the past several years had been a period of great danger and violence as big mining companies encroach into ancestral and agricultural land, using the military to drive them away. Many peasant and Lumad leaders who opposed these projects have ended up dead and tortured.

In one of their stories of long ago, the Mansaka, an indigenous tribe from the provinces of Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley, once possessed a golden guitar, which they played when they sang their songs of longing, aspirations and victory.

A farmer in Compostela Valley who last seen beaten and forcibly taken allegedly by soldiers on July 4 remains missing. Alvin Lopez, 25, a resident of Monkayo was hogtied and forced into a military vehicle during a military operation. Alvin’s mother, Erlinda, has filed a complaint before the Commission on Human Rights against the military’s 26th Infantry Battalion. Read the full story

BY BULATLAT An anti-mining activist was killed by unidentified men two days before Christmas, an environmentalist group in Compostela Valely said. Fernando Sarmiento, 39, secretary general of Panalipdan-Southern Mindanao Region (SMR), was killed by still unidentified men, December 23, around 7 p.m. at Purok 1, Barangay Cabinuangan, New Bataan, Compostela Valley Province. Francis Morales, spokesperson [...]

Is the recent spate of activist killings in Southern Mindanao an unfortunate series of coincidences or are they somehow related to the Philippine military’s counter-insurgency program Oplan Bantay Laya 2? Successive reports and claims of shootings involving a red XRM motorbike; the use of a .45 pistol and the fact that three Bayan Muna (People [...]

A Bayan Muna (People First) leader who was shot and wounded by two unidentified men in Monkayo, Compostela Valley last November 30 died yesterday at the Davao Regional Hospital. Isabelo Celing, 47, barangay (village) coordinator of Bayan Muna Party List in Haguimitan was shot and wounded by armed men on board a red XRM motorcycle [...]

The spokesperson of an environmentalist group in Southern Mindanao said that the setting up of the Investment Defense Force (IDF) and the mining liberalization policy of the Arroyo regime ‘further strengthen the previous military support granted by the Arroyo regime to large-scale and foreign mining corporations.’ BY BULATLAT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH A broad alliance of [...]