On the 28th of January 2018, indigenous Lumad organization member of the “Tinanaon Kulamanon Lumadnong Panaghiusa”, Ricky Baguio Olado was violently gunned down by two men on motorcycles.

The event took place in the town of Arakan, Cotabato province in the Philippines. Olado worked within the Tinanaon Kulamanon Lumadnong Panaghiusa” that fights for land rights against the interests of multinational corporations and against the environmentally deleterious mining and logging corporations that continue to affect internal community displacement.

The surge of killings of individuals like Olado has resulted in a mass exodus of thousands of indigenous Lumads from the province.

Though the assailants are unidentified, they are suspected to be a part of military agents that, under the Duterte administration, make no distinction between armed combatants and civilians that protest human rights.