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Monday, April 04, 2005
Lawyers to lead bid to oust logging firm
By Ben Serrano
Caraga correspondent
MARIHATAG, Surigao del Sur -- The newly formed environmentalist group Save Surigao del Sur Movement which is composed of lawyers and working professionals in Surigao del Sur said they will take the cudgel of mounting ouster protest against log firm, Sudecor.
Sudecor has been lauded by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) as award winning.
Lawyer Tony Azarcon, convenor of the movement told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro in an exclusive interview here that together with other lawyers in Surigao del Sur they will wage legal battles to have the court issue an "injunction" against Sudecor that will pave the way for the total closure and ouster of the logging company in the province.
Calling themselves as committed and principled lawyers and professionals, Azarcon together with prominent lawyers, Gerry Maglinte and Jun Alciso vowed to exhaust every legal means they can in urging government to cancel 76,000 hectares logging concession of Sudecor and eventually oust them from the province.
The lawyers like GMA 7 I-witness host Jay Taruc believed Sudecor has grossly violated agreement in the TLA and other environmental protection laws when it destroyed lumads "sacred grounds."
These include burial and worship grounds, cut trees within disallowed area and wrecked watershed areas as a result of alleged logging operations within 16,900 hectares ancestral domain of lumad dwellers in Lanuza, Surigao del Sur.
Burial grounds
But DENR in its four pages resolution in answer to complaints raised by lumads against Sudecor cleared the logging firm of any wrong doing saying those charges were imputed only to malign the good name of the logging firm.
In its memorandum dated March 28, the DENR said Sudecor merely assisted the lumads in their request to cut trees in lumads's sacred places and burial grounds intended for the construction of the indigenous people's guesthouse, houses and bridges as manifested in an affidavit issued by their tribal leader and Purok Chairman Benigno Maca.
As an offshoot, Sudecor has filed "grave coercion" cases against barricaders, protesting leaders, Parish Priest, Fr. Francisco Olvis, Municipal Councilor Richard Arreza and several tribal chieftains of said area who joined allegedly the barricade protest last month.
Sudecor operations manager Andy Bonrostro told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro that the Puyat owned logging firm will file criminal cases against the protesters and their leaders saying "all they have to wait are warrant of arrest of what they have done to our three logging trucks they barricaded.
But lawyers of the Save Surigao del Sur claimed Bonrostro's filing of criminal cases were only meant to harass and silence them.
The group warned they will hold another bigger barricades if necessary to dramatize their opposition against Sudecor's alleged destructive logging operations.
(April 4, 2005 issue)
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