GAAVI-Kennemer, out of Sezukudang! Stand with the Menuvu in th defense of ancestral lands!

On May 15, workers and armed guards of the Green Arrow Agriventures, Inc. (GAAVI), a subsidiary of agribusiness group Kennemer Foods International, conducted fencing and encroachment activities inside the ancestral lands of the Kirinteken-Ilentungen Menuvu in Don Carlos, Bukidnon. GAAVI’s personnels started digging holes for the setting up of perimeter fences around their 195-hectare banana plantation encroached inside the ancestral domain of the tribe.

We condemn this act of fencing, a violent act of land grabbing of Sezukudang (traditional name of the Indigenous territory) that threatens to trap the community and cut them off from their sacred sites, sources of livelihood, and ancestral homes. This is nothing less than the continuing dispossession and displacement of Indigenous Peoples from lands they have defended and cultivated for generations.

The aggressive expansion of plantations in Indigenous territories is not new. For decades, giant agribusiness corporations such as Del Monte Philippines, Dole Philippines, and Sumifru Philippines, have plundered ancestral lands and converted vast areas into export-oriented plantations for profit. Since 2023 when the Consuji Group acquired Hacienda Asia Plantations, Inc. (HAPI), farmers and the Magahat-Bukidnon report that widespread land-grabbing, destruction of farms, environmental damage, and militarization. Indigenous Peoples are driven away from the lands they till and protect, only to be forced back as cheap laborers in the very plantations built on stolen land. While communities sink deeper into poverty, giant corporations and landlords continue to amass wealth from the exploitation of Indigenous labor and natural resources. This is the brutal reality of plantation expansion in the Philippines: landlessness, exploitation, and the relentless assault on Indigenous Peoples’ right to land and self-determination.

KATRIBU stands in militant solidarity with the Kirinteken-Ilentungen Menuvu in defending Sezukadang against corporate plunder and land grabbing. We demand the immediate dismantling of the fences and the pullout of GAAVI-Kennemer from their land. Without genuine consent from the affected residents and Indigenous Peoples of the area, projects, plantations, businesses, and even military activities are not welcome and not allowed to operate.

We call on all Indigenous Peoples and advocates to stand with Kirinteken-Ilentungen Menuvu in defending their ancestral land. Let us echo this issue of landgrabbing and intensify the struggle against imperialist plunder, corporate greed, and state-backed dispossession.

Reference: Funa-ay Claver, Secretary General