Challenges Molbog people face amidst development aggression
Featured photo from EMB MIMAROPA
While tourism can spur economic development, should it come at the expense of displacing indigenous peoples who have been living and farming in these areas for so long?
In an episode of Kodao Radio based in the Philippines, indigenous peoples of Molbog from the Bugsuk Island in Palawan shared their experiences about how they were displaced from their own ancestral territory, which traces back to the Martial Law dictatorship. The Molbog people were forced out of their land as a large corporation wanted to use the area to establish a coconut plantation. Until now, they face intimidation from the powers-that-be and from the capitalists who forced them out.
Melanio Bundac of the group Balik Bugsuk Movement-PAKISAMA told Kodao Radio’s Raymund Villanueva that their people organized a movement to push for their return to their island. They also desire to return to fishing and farming in their own island. Terhata Pelayo, also a member of the Balik Bugsuk Movement, stands that their people are just asserting their rights as indigenous peoples living in ancestral land.
Listen to this episode of the Rural Radio Initiative here.