Church leaders gather to express opposition to large-scale mining in Eastern Visayas and Masbate

By CATHERINE T. BALDELOBAR, Samar News.com
March 22, 2012

TACLOBAN CITY  –  The Eastern Visayas Ecumenical Forum on People’s Mining was held on 19 Mar 2012 at Cawaksi Learning Center, San Jose Tacloban City.  The forum Head of the Conveners were Bp Dulce Pia-Rose of United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), Rev Fr Victor Palero of Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI), and Msgr Walter Cerbito of the Roman Catholic (RC). The forum underscored the unity statement of the aforecited religious groups.

The statement claimed that it is imperative of the faith of the religious in Eastern Visayas to join hands and lives to preserve and defend the wealth God has bestowed on the people. Six (6) Bishops and their clergy in the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Catarman, Calbayog, Borongan, Palo, Naval, and Maasin; with the Conference Ministers, Pastors and Lay Leaders led by the Area Bishop in the East Visayas Jurisdiction of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines; and with the Bishops and Priests of the Diocese of BILLESA (Biliran, Leyte and Samar) of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente have shown their unequivocal position against the large-scale mining.

The statement averred that Samar, Leyte, Biliran and Masbate, among others, has been desecrated and destroyed for ages now by a few and powerful mining foreign investors with their Filipino counterparts as their dummies and in cahoots with the government. This has made impossible the distribution of unused public lands and the tenanted lands of the rural landlords to the landless farmers. In spite of all this exploitation that could be valued in billions, we know there are still trillions of pesos worth of bauxite, chromites, pyrite, nickel, copper, gold, uranium, coal, aluminium, vanadium, titanium, and 20 other mineral deposits left in the whole of Eastern Visayas.