Please Help Our People, The Agta

Friends,
Please continue to spread what is going on with the Casiguran Agta and their neighboring farmers and fisherfolk concerning the unethical and unjust land-grabbing that APECO is doing there. I lived most of my life from birth until 22 years old feeling that I was an Agta. Our whole family loves them dearly and are sick to see their ancestral land being taken from them by the greedy and the powerful. As the Agta are being forced off their land, they are having nowhere to fish or hunt, gather or grow food, or live. Where are these already poverty-stricken people supposed to go? Have they not already had enough suffering, often even being denied medical help because they have no money, and now their land is being stolen right out from under them? Why has the Philippine government not upheld, in this case, their 1987 Philippine Constitution which states protection of Human Rights?

“Mariano also said that the Apeco law violates the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands provided in the 1987 Philippine Constitution and related law (Republic Act No. 8371 otherwise known as Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997.” See this quote at:

http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/02/24/bill-seeks-scrapping-of-ecozone-project-in-aurora/

Please continue to inform the world as to the truth of what is going on. It is injustice against the weakest of the weak, and it is shameful.

Here are some more informative articles.

http://re4teraker.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/records-prove-anomalies-on-aurora-ecozone-priest-groups/

https://twitter.com/TFAAFeed

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/10399773-antiapeco-groups-welcome-charges-against-angaras

Here is a FB page where you can add your signatures requesting President Aquino to take action against the unethical APECO. There are also some good photos there.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-More-Fun-in-Aurora-Without-Apeco/247048898709191

Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International in London, the leading international NGO lobbying for indigenous human rights (www.survivalinternational.org), has written to the President of the Philippines on behalf of the Agta peoples’ current land crisis. It would help the Agta if everyone would write a polite letter now to the Philippine President, President Benigno Aquino III, encouraging him to meet with the many farmers, fisherfolk and Agta of Casiguran when they arrive at his Palace gates in Manila on December 10 (Human Rights Day). That day will be the end of their present march from Casiguran which began on Nov. 24. President Aquino’s email address is op@president.gov.ph.

Please take some of your time and send these links out to your FB or email lists and please get on your knees and pray. Pray that God will grant favor to the Agta and demolish the plans of their oppressors. Thank you.

Sincerely,
with love,
Rachel
P.S. Here are 18 photos of our family living amongst the Agta:

Me (Rachel) with two Agta friends, about 1965.

My parents (Tom and Janet Headland) and me (Rachel) outside our house.

Dad with some Agta.  (This house later got washed away in a flood.)

Our family picnicking in the Agta forest 1968

Rachel and Steve, at Muntay, Koso, Casiguran, 1967

My brother, Steve, in hammock with Daddy

Me (Rachel), and Helen (who baby-sat us a lot), and Steve.

Kekek playing kid’s guitar, with me (Rachel) and friends dancing

Me (Rachel) with Agta women pounding rice.

Me (Rachel) looking at a beneg (a type of iguana).

Rachel and Jenny, 1978, Limay, Casiguran Bay, when the Agta were living on the reservation

(1983) Bekneg, the girl on the end next to me (Rachel) was 12 years old at the time. She died 3 years later.

Pidela, my dad, and me arriving back from a survey trip in the mission helicopter. (1984)

Me (Rachel) outside our house at Pasarubuy. (1985)

My dad checking family histories, 1998

My dad holding me (Rachel), with Agta family, 1964

Me (Rachel) watching my mom give medicine to an Agta child

My dad with Agta, and Jenny at upper right, 1978