BULATLAT INVESTIGATIVE REPORT Farm workers of Hacienda Luisita dispute the claim by the Cojuangcos that SDO has been good for their thousands of farm workers. Farm workers say they have been losing their jobs, receiving pitiable pay and may lose their own homes, too. BY DABET CASTAÑDA Bulatlat.com (Second of two parts / Read the…
Month: December 2004
For Land and Wages: Half a Century of Peasant Struggle in Hacienda Luisita
BULATLAT INVESTIGATIVE REPORT The Versolas continue to support the strike, visiting the picket line to watch documentaries on the massacre, help in the kitchen chores or just exchange views with anyone. Mang Pering says that their forefathers’ struggle to finally own the land that is rightfully theirs rages on. BY DABET CASTAÑEDA Bulatlat.com (First of…
Living on the Edge: The Sacadas of Hacienda Luisita
After several minutes of searching in the shadows, we finally find them, with lights from their gas lamps flickering through sack-covered bunkhouses. They stay by the edge of the Cojuangcos’ sprawling sugar plantation in Tarlac, far from the estate’s factories and barrios.
Desertification in the Making: Philippines Has Lost 80% of Its Forest Cover
Only 20 percent of the country’s original forest cover remains, making the Philippines the only country in Southeast Asia with the thinnest forest cover. An environmental group in Aurora foresees that all forest cover will be gone by the end of this decade (or 2010) if logging operations continue at their present pace.
Mayhem in Labor Chief’s Power: Workers Say ‘Assumption of Jurisdiction’ Is Anti-Labor
The labor secretary’s “assumption of jurisdiction” power is being used to ban all strikes and has caused bloodshed in the workers front. This is like reliving martial law, militant labor unions say.
Massacre Shooters Go Berserk in Luisita, Claim 8th Victim
Shots shattered the evening calm as a peasant leader, Marcelino Beltran, went out of his house to greet some “visitors.” The visitors pumped bullets into his body and he died two hours later – the eighth to fall following the Nov. 16 massacre of seven farmers at Hacienda Luisita.
Hacienda Luisita dispersal: Shots Were Fired During Lull in Scuffle
From the testimony of a worker at the front lines of the Hacienda Luisita picket and the unedited version of a footage taken by an independent media practitioner, police started firing at the strikers during a lull in the fighting. The scenes from the unedited footage, shown Dec. 1 at a hearing of the Senate…