Quezon land recipients bare threats
LUCENA CITY—Hours after the tenant-beneficiaries of Hacienda Matias in San Francisco town, Quezon province, received their certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) under the government’s agrarian reform program, harassment from the alleged workers of landowners immediately followed.
Maribel Luzara, president of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Bondoc Peninsula (KMBP) and one of the tenant-beneficiaries of Hacienda Matias, said workers of the estate on Friday told most of the 312 beneficiaries that the land titles they just received from the government were “fake.”
“Apparently, the intention of the landowners is to reject the CLOA and insist that they still own the estate,” Luzara said on the phone on Friday.
Some of the beneficiaries were also threatened with eviction from the hacienda should they insist on asserting ownership of the land awarded to them, she added.
Jansept Geronimo, spokesperson for Kilusan para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan-Quezon, said that after the land distribution ceremony at the town hall on Friday, they accompanied some of the beneficiaries back to the hacienda in the villages of Butanglad and Don Juan Vercelos.
The beneficiaries were given CLOAs that granted them ownership of 639 hectares of the 1,736-ha estate, with each CLOA-holder receiving land areas ranging from half a hectare to a maximum of 3 ha.
“But we were not allowed by the hacienda guards to pass through the gate when in fact, the location of the gate itself has already been awarded to a beneficiary,” Geronimo said.
He said they were advised by the tenants to immediately leave San Francisco as something bad could happen to them.
Geronimo said their group thus left the town before sunset and headed back to Lucena.
He called on the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to organize an interagency committee to be composed of the police, military and other government agencies for the immediate installation of land reform beneficiaries in the Matias estate.
“It’s about time the hacienda steel gate be demolished. The gate has long been the symbol of the tenants’ oppression,” he said.
Samuel Solomero, DAR Quezon II officer in charge, said anyone who would harass the new landowners would face the full force of the law.
“The farmers are now the legitimate landowners who possess all the rights to their lands,” he said.
Senior Supt. Ronaldo Genaro Ylagan, Quezon police chief, said he would immediately order the San Francisco police station to give full protection to the agrarian reform beneficiaries while the tenants, who believe they are being harassed or threatened, should quickly bring the matter to the police.
The Matias clan fought for the exemption of the 1,736-ha estate from the government’s agrarian reform program by declaring the land as a “cattle ranch.”
The landowners brought the matter to Malacañang after the DAR denied on June 14, 2012, the application for exemption for lack of merit, but on June 9, Malacañang junked the Matias clan’s petition.
