ADVERTISEMENT
“We need to show them that we are not buying their story line-- the victims are the ones being blamed and a child survivor is being forced to pin down innocent persons for the crime.”
"The deployment of more state security forces in the province and in the whole Negros Island would not lead to the so-called peace and order. They are there primarily to protect the interests of big landlords who still lord over the Island.”
Fourteen years after the Hacienda Luisita massacre, farmers still fight for their land. The Cojuangco-Aquinos have regained control of the vast sugar plantation with the aid of the Department of Agrarian Reform, military and police.
What often gets left out of the frame are images of farmer and fisherfolk households forcibly evicted from their homes, divested of livelihood, security, and property. What never make the headlines are these stories of poor families excluded from their own community due to land grabs, which remain doubly driven by private property and wanton state complicity.
'The manner by which the killing was committed points to impunity on the part of the perpetrators.'
Nine farmers were killed and three wounded in a massacre in Hacienda Nene in Purok Pine Tree Barangay Bulanon in Sagay City, where farmers are staging “bungkalan” or land cultivation of idle farm lands.
“Not one area of any successful bungkalan did not go through harassment from soldiers, goons, policemen.”
If the government is looking for someone to blame for the inflation and increasing prices of basic commodities as rice and fish, it is its own neglect to subsidize agricultural producers when other countries have been actively doing so, and its tax and investment policies that hit the agricultural producers and consumers hard.
"The SC decision lacks any sense of social justice."
“Two years of the Duterte regime is two years of non-agrarian reform agenda, as it has yet to pass a new law to replace the expired and failed CARP.”
“Two years of the Duterte regime is two years of non-agrarian reform agenda, as it has yet to pass a new law to replace the expired and failed CARP.”
“This sinister move clearly aims to 'zombify' the CARP law which expired on June 30, 2014.”
The bungkalan has been the NFSW’s campaign since 2008 for sugar workers to survive Tiempo Muerto or “dead season”, the period between planting and harvesting sugarcane. It usually lasts five months from April to September resulting to massive hunger among the farm workers.
Military presence in Eastern Visayas is likened to the prevalence of pests in the area -- a burden and a pretext to greater destruction of farmers’ crops and even their lives. Following the arrival of the military in each village is always a long list of rights violations and the continued culture of impunity.
In both dialogues, many questions were left unanswered and many concerns were left hanging. What cannot be ignored, however, is the reality that the farmers' plight is always anchored on one unanswered call: genuine agrarian reform.
As of December 2017, Karapatan has already documented 126 cases of extrajudicial killings in the whole country -- at least half of which committed in the Southern Mindanao Region (SMR).
“We have exhausted all means to raise our issues to the local DA (Department of Agriculture) and Samar LGUs (local government units) but our demands fell on deaf ears."
A community of readers and supporters that help us sustain our operations through microdonations for as low as $1.
Save as PDF