The Philippines has been declared as among the deadliest countries in the world for environmental defenders for four straight years. Mining-related killings accounted for the plurality of these cases, with indigenous lumad people as among the hardest hit, according to the report.

We do not condone such violence and intimidation.

Government has thus established the Indigenous Peoples Inter-Agency Task Force composed of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), its corporate arm, the Natural Resources Development Corp. (NRDC) and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to ensure that indigenous peoples are not subjected to undue pressure and influence from unscrupulous businessmen intending to extract natural resources from their ancestral lands.