Timuay Lucenio Manda is a Thimuay or ancestral leader of the indigenous Subanon people of the Zamboanga peninsula in the Philippines.
[2] Timuay Manda is well known for his attempts to protect his tribe’s ancestral domain and has been outspoken in his call for a moratorium on mining concessions in Bayog, a heavily forested region of the southwestern Philippines islands.
[1] On 4 September 2012, Manda was driving his 11-year-old son to elementary school in Barangay Datagan in Bayog on his motorcycle when they were ambushed by armed assailants.
[1] Amnesty International is supporting Manda in his fight against those who targeted him and the head of Amnesty International in the Philippines, Aurora Parong, has called upon Philippine president Benigno Aquino III to bring perpetrators to justice and stop what the group says is a culture of impunity that has left 36 tribal activists dead over the last several years.
[2] Amnesty International have also noted that Manda’s family has been targeted before in the past, with his cousin fatally shot a decade ago.