Philippine Learning Tour Update: My birthday yesterday was marked by greetings from every corners of the world. But most meanigfully it was marked by our visit to the mining site of the Toronto Ventures Inc. Resource Development (TVIRD) in Sitio Balabag, Bayog Town, Zamboanga del Sur. As I posted yesterday, only 3 of us out of 81 members of the Philippine Learning Tour (PLT) were allowed. Thnaks God we have returned home safely. Now we are on the last day of the PLT. A press conference is set at lunch time today. For clarity: 1. TVIRD 2. The PLT. May I just copy I paste here in toto the rationale of this activity... “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (Gen. 2:15) Hence, God ordains human beings to be the stewards of His creation. However, God’s creation today is groaning because many times humans have failed to become responsible keepers of what God has entrusted to them. Thus, calamities, hunger, and scarcity of food are anywhere and countless have died because of these. The Philippines is naturally rich with minerals and mining companies are taking advantage of our government’s subservience to foreign control and domination. Thus, foreign companies are flooding in our land to invest in mining industry and this greatly contributes to the destruction of our environment and the displacement of indigenous peoples who are the common dwellers of the gradually disappearing green habitat. In the pursuit of protection of the gift of life and as an expression of solidarity to the affected indigenous peoples communities, there will be a Philippine Learning Tour from August 1 to August 6, 2014. Visitors from Canadian churches are coming to respond to an appeal from the indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Zamboanga del Sur, an area affected by TVI Pacific’s new, 5,000 hectare mining site in Balabag, Bayog, Zamboanga, which includes the ancestral domain of the Subanen people. Tour members will visit affected sites in Midsalip, Zamboanga del Sur on August 1-2 and in Bayog of the same province on August 3-5, meet with members of indigenous and non-indigenous communities, including victims of human rights violations and their families, church leaders, local government and mining company representatives, and officials from the Canadian Mission in Manila. God is still speaking to us today to do something before it is too late. We therefore would like to invite you to be present during this Tour because we believe that you are God’s empowered advocate. We are sure that your presence will help build an impact on the promotion for the preservation of the gift of life.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 01:57:46 +0000
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