Is saving indigenous people kids considered child abuse?

August 16, 2024

MANILA – This subject matter has been brewing in my mind especially last week (Aug. 9) which was International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (IP) but the 2024 Paris Olympics and its sideshows got in the way of my thoughts. So here, though belatedly, are what should have been last week’s FAQs (frequently asked questions) from me, and other facts besides. How well-meaning persons who had helped evacuate pupils from an indigenous community school in the military crosshairs were charged with committing child abuse and found guilty at that.

Inquirer’s banner story (7/16/24): “Ocampo, Castro, 11 others convicted of child abuse.” Satur Ocampo, former Bayan Muna party list representative, and France Castro, ACT party list representative, led the list of convicts. The Tagum City Regional Trial Court (RTC) convicted Ocampo et al. for violation of Republic Act No. 7610 or the Special Protection of Children Against, Abuse, Exploitation, and Discrimination Act. The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) hailed the verdict.

(Disclosure: I am the lead petitioner in one of many petitions against “Red-tagging” filed in the Supreme Court against NTF-Elcac. As a journalist since the 1980s, I had been in a number of fact-finding missions to remote places that suffered militarization and were suspected to be communist-influenced. I had to face the aftermath, legal among them.)

This RTC decision deserves to remain a top-of-mind issue until the story reaches a denouement that would make people sit up and wonder what true justice is all about or how it is not. In the meantime, the question: Who will protect the protectors? Who will defend the defenders? How, why is saving IP kids