YOU’VE probably heard it before, being told that “you’re looking at it the wrong way”, I mean. The situation likely involved being stuck in a bind, the resolution of which hinged on being able to develop a different understanding that would lead to other, maybe new and better, solutions.
Such is the logic of “framing”. More than just enabling one to view and approach an issue in another way, the frame itself is important. The frame isolates the subject matter and highlights it, affording depth and perspective, much like the way a picture frame does. In this sense, the choice of frame matters.
If the view of the Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) of the Armed Force of the Philippines (AFP) that the 700 Talaingod Manobos who are in the Haran Compound of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) in Davao City are not evacuees but victims of human trafficking is indeed a way of framing the issue, then it’s a most interesting frame.
It certainly is a different way of understanding a subject that has already created a stir. After all, no less than a legislator who apparently wanted to do part-time work as enforcer led a “rescue” attempt on July 23 that was ironically resisted by those ostensibly being rescued, and harmed 17 Lumads and two police.
Further, the AFP found a new reference, no less than Cheloka Beyani, the United Nation (UN) Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, on whose alleged assessment the Eastern Mindanao Command based its August 7 media release saying that the “Indigenous People (IP) inside the compound of United Church of Christ of the Philippines (UCCP) in Haran, Davao City are manipulated, not evacuees but victims of trafficking”.
Human trafficking is defined by Philippine Expanded Anti-Trafficking Persons Act of 2012 as “…the recruitment, obtaining, hiring, providing, offering, transportation, transfer, maintaining, harboring, or receipt of persons with or without the victim’s consent or knowledge, within or across national borders by means of threat, or use of force, or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or of position, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the person, or, the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation which includes at a minimum, the exploitation or the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, servitude or the removal or sale of organs.”
Call it a stroke of creative thinking, in one fell swoop, the Eastmincom was able to shift the blame on to organizations aiding the Lumads who, if we follow the logic of the press release, can now be labeled “traffickers” aside from the usual Leftist tag. It also justifies the July 23 rescue efforts of Government and the military, and any future attempts to pull the Talaingod Manobos out of their chosen, if temporary sanctuary. Remembering the words of Rep. Catamco, “there is always a next time”.
However, it could very well have been a misleading stroke. For as Cheloka Beyani noted in his August 13 media statement “…the AFP statement by the Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) in its news release of 7 August that the Lumads (indigenous people) in Davao City are victims of human trafficking is incorrect, unacceptable, and represents a gross distortion of my views on this issue.”
Beyani elaborated that he was explicit in his view that the “indigenous persons concerned should under no circumstances be considered to fall into the category of trafficked persons” in the discussions he had with senior AFP officials and in a press conference.
An earlier statement of Beyani issued on July 31 also attested that the lumads were not being forcibly detained in Haran but cautioned that the Lumad’s situation is “neither acceptable nor sustainable”.
So one problem of framing the Talaingod Manobo in Haran issue as human trafficking is that the UN high-ranking official cited as endorsing it actually disagrees with it. But wait, there’s more.
The framing does not shed new understanding about the problem; rather it muddles it in a manner that is convenient to those who are inconvenienced by the challenge posed by the Talaingod Manobos. Human trafficking is a serious problem in the Philippines, as it were. Using it as a convenient handle to recast and re-categorize the problems of one troubled group of people into one that will make government and the military less culpable, and fundamentally alter the nature of the debate from ancestral domains and militarization to trafficking in persons is foul.
The other problem with human trafficking as a frame for understanding and resolving the case of the Talaingod Manobos in Haran is that it neither acknowledges nor addresses the reasons why the Manobos left their ancestral domains in the first place.
If the Manobos are treated as trafficked persons, then it really is just a matter of bringing them back to Talaingod. When they get home, perhaps there would be a medical mission, stress debriefing, livelihood packages, and stern reminders from the inter-agency mechanisms against trafficking about avoiding being victimized by recruiters in the future.
But the framing will not necessarily lead to better and innovative responses, to a change in the situation. The Manobos would also go home to militarized conditions and the risk of further harassments from the paramilitary group Alamara. With conditions back in Talaingod fundamentally unchanged, it would be like sending the 700 Talaingod Manobos to perdition. As Datu Kailo Buntulan said to media in the aftermath of the July 23 assault on Haran, “we are here because we are in danger. If they send us home, we will be in absolute danger.”
Insisting on a “new” way of looking way at something but which actually just perpetuates the status quo is not framing; it is just plain distortion.
So who’s looking at it the wrong way?
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