How Canadian capital is implicated in the killing of Jevilyn Cullamat | Op-Ed
Written by: Andy Tran and Benjamin Zidar
Jevilyn Campos Cullamat, daughter of Eufemia Cullamat, a representative of the Bayan Muna party list to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, was killed on Friday November 27, 2020 by the 3rd Special Forces Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Jevilyn was serving as a medic in the New People’s Army. Under international law, “permanent medical personnel shall be respected and protected at all times: they may not be made the object of attack.”
Moreover, photographs of her corpse were posted to AFP social media sites, as well as the AFP news site Kalinaw News. This is also a clear breach of international law.
A Choice for the People
In 2015, at age 17, Jevilyn witnessed the brutal murder of her relatives Dional Campos and Datu Bello Sinzo, as well Emerito Samarca (Executive Director of ALCADEV Lumad school). The murders took place during the Lianga Massacre at the hands of CAFGU paramilitaries (civilian gangs organized by the AFP). Sometime after this, Jevilyn chose to join the New People’s Army as a medic.
Rep. Cullamat spoke of her daughter’s heroism. “Her decision to join the armed conflict is not a simple matter, it was triggered by the abuses that us Lumads [their group of Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao] have experienced and the poverty she witnessed... Whatever the vultures around my daughter's dead body say, this is all I can say: her life, which she sacrificed for the nation and to defend our ancestral land, was not wasted.”
Jevilyn could have tried to profit from her mother’s position. In a country ruled by political dynasties, many other families exploit their political connections to get rich off the wealth of the people.
But instead, Jevilyn joined what is increasingly the only way for Lumads, peasants, and the poor to resist exploitation and oppression. Jevilyn chose to serve her people.
Jevilyn is not the first Lumad to be killed in Mindanao while defending her ancestral lands. Even within the past several years, leading members of Lumad organizations like KASILO, Katribu, KRLO, MAPASU, PASAKA, Salugpongan, as well as unaffiliated Lumad youth and peasants have been killed by the AFP, paramilitaries, and gangs in the service of big multinationals. The killing of legal-democratic activists, uninvolved in the armed struggle, forces Lumads and other oppressed sectors onto the path of armed confrontation.
Canadian Capital
AFP and CAFGU act as mercenaries for American, Canadian, and other foreign capital. This foreign capital intrudes into Lumad lands in the form of multinational agribusiness, mining and logging corporations. One example is TVI Pacific, based in Calgary, Alberta. According to Miningwatch Canada, nearly 6000 Lumads have been forced to evacuate their ancestral homelands due to the activities of these companies since September 2015.
The responsibility for Jevliyn’s killing and desecration lies not only in the hands of those individuals who committed the crime, but of the historical agents of imperialism and neocolonialism who have exploited the peoples of the Philippines.
As an organization in Canada, CPSO-Toronto has a responsibility to link the oppression and exploitation faced by the peoples of the Philippines to the semi-colonial conditions forced on it by countries like Canada.
Closing the Door on Peace
Duterte is the one who signaled his disdain for peace when he unilaterally closed peace talks with the NDFP in 2016. Since then his government has repeatedly violated the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG). In the past two years alone, peace consultants Randy Echanis, Felix Randy Malayao, Eugenia Magpantay, and Agaton Topacio have all been murdered at the hands of state forces. If consultants to a peace process, protected by signed agreements, can be murdered in cold blood, what protects activists and critics without such status?
The Philippine government’s new Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 further closes the door to activists and critics who have chosen the route of peaceful agitation for social change. It allows the Philippine state to label opponents and critics as “terrorists” at will, and therefore legal methods of struggle are being denied to the broad masses of the Philippines. As long as the repression continues, there will be more young people who have no choice but to follow Jevilyn’s path into the armed struggle.
In order for a just peace to be achieved in the Philippines, the movement for national democracy and the defense of ancestral lands must prevail over the reactionary forces of semi-feudalism, semi-colonialism, and bureaucrat capitalism.
Andy Tran and Benjamin Zidar are members of the Canada-Philippines Solidarity Organization, which seeks to raise awareness of and solidarity with the Filipino people and their National Democratic movement.
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