A land dispute between the administration of the Central Mindanao University and its 200 farmer-tenants almost resulted in a massacre last June 22.
BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Bulatlat
Vol VII, No. 23 July 15-21
For defending the land her family has cultivated for more than two decades, 33-year old Noralyn Galan almost lost her child after being shot at by security guards of the Central Mindanao University (CMU), June 22. Galan, a day care teacher whose parents are farmer-tenants, was two months pregnant at the time of the incident.
On June 22, 200 farmers belonging to the Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus (BTL), a farmers’ organization decided to prepare their 400-hectare land for cultivation after three months that it was kept idle. When they started cultivating the land, security guards of CMU fired their guns aiming near the farmers and their families to scare and prevent them from tilling the land.
“I told the security guard I was pregnant but he ignored me. He just fired his gun near me twice while I held on to the hand tractor,” Galan said in an interview with an international fact finding mission team (IFFM) of advocates of peasant issues. Galan identified her assailant as Randy Liwanan, her brother’s schoolmate.
Galan said she saw policemen about 50 meters away from where she stood. “They were only looking and laughing,” she told the IFFM team. Galan was hospitalized for three days after she felt abdominal pains and experienced nausea after the shooting incident.
Already awarded to the farmer-tenants
The 400-hectare land in dispute was awarded to the farmer-tenants in 1987, agrarian lawyer Jobert Pahilga said in an interview. Pahilga, executive director of the Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (SENTRA or Center for Genuine Agrarian Reform) was part of the International Fact Finding Mission (IFFM) team that investigated the June 22 incident. The fact finding mission was conducted July 5-8 and was led by former Anakpawis (toiling masses) Rep. Rafael Mariano.
Under the Comprehensive Agrarian Law (CARL), 200 farmer-tenants were given Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOA) and were awarded 400-hectares by the Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board (DARAB). The land is part of the premises of the CMU. The farmer-beneficiaries are mostly former employees of the CMU.
Court records show that in 1991, the CMU appealed the case to the Court of Appeals (CA) but lost. On Aug. 20, 1990 the CA affirmed the decision of the DARAB which ordered the “segregation of 400 hectares of suitable, compact and contiguous portions of CMU land and their inclusion in the CARP for distribution to qualified beneficiaries,” and rejected the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
Supreme Court intervention
However, in 1992, the Supreme Court (SC) overturned the CA decision in favor of CMU.
In its decision, the SC said the CA and DARAB exercised “grave abuse of discretion” in its decision against the CMU. “To our mind, the taking of the CMU land which had been segregated for educational purposes for distribution to yet uncertain beneficiaries is a gross misinterpretation of the authority and jurisdiction granted by law to the DARAB.”
Pahilga however said the SC decision was defective because the 400-hectare land in question was not being used by CMU for educational purposes but has been used for agricultural purposes by the farmers for years.
Agreement
In 2002, BTL and CMU signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) stating that the CMU will have to find a relocation site for the farmers. While the farmers waited for their relocation, they were allowed to lease the land for P4, 000 (($87.43 at an exchange rate of $1=P45.75) per hectare annually. The lease expired March 10, 2007.
After the lease expired, Pahilga said the farmers were not allowed to cultivate the land any longer. This posed a bigger problem because, Pahilga said, the farmers were left with no livelihood and nothing to eat.
BTL leaders immediately approached CMU officials to give them a three-month extension to move out provided that CMU finds a suitable relocation.
After three months, Pahilga said, CMU security guards began harassing the farmers to leave the area even without the CMU providing a relocation site.
With no food on their table and children not being able to go to school, BTL farmers decided to till the land again until the June 22 incident.
International support
“I see here a violation of the human rights of peasants, especially the right to food that is among those enshrined in the United Nations Human Rights Declaration,” said Biplap Halim, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) and Indian Federation of Toiling Peasants (IFTOP). Halim was part of the IFFM team.
Meanwhile, Ryan Earheart, a geography professor at City University in New York, commended the BTL farmers’ sustainable agriculture practices. “We increasingly see around the world the limits of agriculture based on chemical inputs. Sustainable agriculture is the wave of the future. The CMU has a chance to be at the front of this movement by allowing BTL farmers to plant and experiment with traditional rice varieties,” said Earheart.
The IFFM was sponsored by the APC, People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty (PCFS), and Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific (PANAP). It was organized by KMP and Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (SENTRA); and hosted by The Bukidnon Free Farmers and Agricultural Laborers Association (Buffalo), Tried Agricultural Movers Association of Rural Active Workers (Tamaraw) and Landless Inhabitants of Musuan (Limus) or BTL and Kahugpungan sa Mag-uuma sa Bukidnon (Kasama-Bukidnon).(Bulatlat.com)
