Speech of Sen. MA Madrigal, [Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Peace, Committee on Youth Women and Family Relations, and Committee on Cultural Communities], before the Third International Assembly of the International League of People Struggles, June 19, 2008, Hong Kong.
ON THE PLUNDER OF THE ENVIRONMENT
THE Chinese have a proverb: “the mountains are high, and the emperor is far away.” Martin Wolf writing in The Financial Times explained the proverb’s meaning.
He wrote, “When the emperor was weak, it became difficult to reach decisions. Officials looked after themselves and their families. Infirmity of purpose, corruption and an inability to protect the empire itself ensued. Sooner or later the dynasty fell, to be replaced by another, often after a period of chaos.”
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ON THE DISPLACEMENT AND VIOLATION OF RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
IT is a great irony that prewar Philippine policy towards our Indigenous Peoples was superior to the policies the nominally independent Philippine state pursues today.
The energies of the Commonwealth government prior to World War II was devoted to identifying large swathes of the country to be set aside as national parks, where logging and mining were disallowed. These areas happened to cover much of the ancestral domains of our indigenous peoples.
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