Beneficiaries sued for theft

LUCENA CITY—Criminal cases, mostly for coconut theft, have been filed by landowners against land reform beneficiaries in Hacienda Matias in Quezon province.

The Inquirer was furnished copies of nine court-issued subpoenas against Maribel Luzara, president of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Bondoc Peninsula (KMBP), and several farmers, most of them KMBP leaders, to answer the charges filed by hacienda owners and their overseers.

“This new wave of legal harassment and violence against us is nothing new. But we will not be cowed,” said Luzara.

“How can we be accused of stealing our own crops?” she said.

The land given out to agrarian reform beneficiaries in 2014 and 2015 involved three titles.