A combined force of police, private guards, and goons arrested at least 29 Mangyan-Iraya residents of Hacienda Almeda in Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro, on October 18. According to the Mindoro Youth for Environment and Nation, those arrested included 17 elderly individuals and 12 minors.

To date, families of the victims have not been able to contact or locate them. According to the Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK), it is possible that their phones were likely confiscated by the police at the precinct where they were taken.

Hacienda Almeda is part of the 31-hectare ancestral land of the Iraya that is being grabbed through harassment, militarization, and deception using armed goons and state agents. “The grabbing of land considered as ancestral domain of the Mangyan-Iraya, who originally resided and farmed in Abra de Ilog, continues” Kasama-TK stated.

Kasama-TK also condemned the collusion of the Almedas with bureaucrat capitalists in the local government and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and some local officials. “Instead of serving the Mangyan, [the NCIP] is an accomplice in the delay and slow process of validating their ancestral land, while their legal assistant from the NCIP even refused to show up,” the group said.

To this day, the community has no Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT). This is clear proof of the rottenness and anti-indigenous nature of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act, under which the CADT is supposed to be issued, the group said.

Aside from the blatant grabbing of their ancestral land, the Mangyan-Iraya face food and water blockades, livestock theft, nightly gunfire, drunkenness near their homes, harassment and abuse of women, and threats to the youth.