cpa@cpaphils.org | Post Office Box 975 Baguio City 2600 Philippines
We vehemently condemn the dastardly act of the Kalinga Philippine National Police forces who desecrated the monument of our Cordillera heroes in Bugnay, Tinglayan, Kalinga province.
We received reports that on January 3, 2020, three pick-up trucks ferried policemen to Bugnay, Tinglayan at the site of the heroes monument and took down the monument panels bearing the profiles of Macliing Dulag, Lumbaya Gayudan and Pedro Dungoc – prominent heroes of the Anti-Chico Dam struggle. This is an affront to the heroism that Dulag, Gayudan, Dungoc and other Chico Dam veterans portrayed in defending our homeland from plunder.
While statues of fascists are being torn down in other parts of the world, here in the Cordillera, state forces are tearing down monuments of peoples’ heroes. A cowardly act of fascists who are so afraid of people knowing the truth, that these heroes were martyred at their hands.
This is one of the state security forces’ shameless attempts to get rid of evidences of their crimes against our Indigenous leaders who fought to defend our homeland from plunder during the Martial Law era. Our collective memory, however, will never be altered and history has them down with records of their atrocities.
This fact is inked in a barangay resolution which we learned was submitted by the residents of Bugnay to the office of the Upper Kalinga District Engineering Office (UKDEO) of the Department of Public Works and Highways, which points to the police as the culprits. By vandalizing the structure, their bloody record in history was not erased; instead, it only showed their penchant for violence to silence any and all who exposes their rotten and fascist ways.
