Vast natural resources and fertile soils have long attracted foreign investment to the Philippines, yet widespread corruption and a culture of impunity for unscrupulous companies has seen the profits disappear into the pockets of a tiny elite. – Global Witness
“The ecological agriculture that landless farm workers have painstakingly carved out of the vast monoculture plantations of Negros sugar barons have been irrigated with blood and bullets.”
“Before it’s too late for our planet and for its peoples’, governments must listen to people and communities for just and equitable development.”
Farmers’ harvests this year are disappointingly smaller than before – not just in amount but in size also of the grains itself.
Since 2017 peasants and peasant women in Northern Samar have complained of extra-judicial killings, military encampment in public schools and in barangays, forcible mass evacuation affecting 2,423 victims, illegal arrest and detention, series of aerial bombing, psywar and surveillance, destruction of properties, sexual harassment and others.
The Congress-approved Senate version does not prohibit fixed-term and multi-layered contracting as demanded by workers. Its provision on penalties and fines on employers and agencies engaged in illegal labor-only contracting is weak.
On top of coercive activities of the police and military forcing the people not to vote for the opposition and the progressives, on top of humongous campaign ads of administration bets, the automated election system itself can and may have been used to spew vote “results” in favor of the administration bets, particularly at the national level.
Maoj Maga, 39, has been put through misery in several congested prisons as well as a quarantine-isolation cell when he has not committed any crime.
There are now only four opposition senators in the opposition, prompting fears that the previously opposed legislations including charter change, the worst of all proposed charter changes according to senatorial bet Neri Colmenares, may soon be resurrected. By MARYA SALAMAT Bulatlat.com MANILA – Amid protests questioning the integrity and results of the elections, the Commissions…
“Duterte has brought about the conditions favorable for the rise of the legal mass protest movement as well as of the more potent armed revolutionary mass movement.”
When Bayan Muna members and Kontra Daya volunteers asked the police handing out the newspapers, the police said, “Wala kami alam d’yan, media yan. Basta pinamimigay lang namin.” (We don’t know anything about that, it’s media (sic). We just distribute these.)