Tension grips Hacienda Luisita over arrest of farmers. PHOTO COURTESY OF UMA
MANILA, Philippines—A peasant group denounced on Sunday, the arrest of eight farmers and the bulldozing of their farm lots at Hacienda Luisita allegedly under orders by a company owned by President Aquino’s family in spite of their claims the land was covered under the agrarian reform program.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) chair Rafael Mariano said the farmers arrested at 4 p.m. Saturday by Tarlac policemen were Vicente Sambo, Rod Acosta, Eufemia Acosta, Ronald Sakay, Jose Baldiviano and his wife Elsa and Manuel and Mamerto Mandigma.
Mariano said two other women arrested were released four hours later.
He said security guards of the Tarlac Development Corporation (Tadeco) assisted the policemen when the KMP members attempted to stop the leveling of the Barangay (village) Balete farmlands, which they claimed were included in the land distribution program of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
Tadeco owns Hacienda Luisita and 70 percent of the shares of stock of Hacienda Luisita Inc, which managed the stock distribution program in 1989. The Supreme Court canceled the program in April last year and ordered the distribution of lands to farmworkers who held shares of stock in 1989.
The court held that the stock option did not improve the lives of the farmers, contrary to the objective of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). The program is due to end in June next year. Nearly 1 million of the nation’s prime agricultural farm lands are still to be distributed to tillers under the program.
Litmus test
The Hacienda Luisita case is regarded as the litmus test of the government’s sincerity in implementing CARP, launched by President Aquino’s mother, the democracy icon Corazon Aquino, in 1988.
In a statement, Mariano said the arrests of the farmers showed the “continuing resistance and defiance of the Cojuangco-Aquinos to the distribution of the lands.”
He maintained that the arrests proved the DAR’s ineptitude and the falsity of the land reform program.
“The landlord President and his family will never let go of Hacieda Luisita. The farm workers must continually assert their rights to land,” said Mariano, adding that the arrested farmers should be immediately released.
Mariano said that on Saturday, several policemen and Tadeco security guards were sent to Barangay Balete to escort a bulldozer ordered to clear the land.
While neither the Tarlac City policemen nor the Tadeco security guards were able to show an order from the court or the DAR, the farmers showed the notice of land reform coverage issued by the department, which included both Barangays Balete and Cutcut.
Even then, the KMP official said, the policemen and security guards proceeded with bulldozing rice and vegetable fields and destroying huts. When the farmers tried to stop the demolition, they were rounded up and arrested.
Mariano claimed that Tadeco started bulldozing some 30 hectares of rice and vegetable lands in Barangay Balete on Dec. 12 despite the notice of coverage issued by the DAR in the areas. The notice of coverage, according to him, means that the lots are up for distribution to qualified farmer-beneficiaries.
Three months ago, at the onset of the distribution of 4,099 hectares of Hacienda Luisita to qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries, Tadeco sent out notices of eviction to 134 farm workers in Barangays Cutcut and Balete, Tarlac City. The 15-day notices stated that the farm workers “entered the land without permission and cultivated it without right and against the law.”
The 134 farmworkers issued notices of eviction are reportedly among 6,212 beneficiaries who are supposed to get 6,600 square meters each CARP. But the DAR has said that if Tadeco had issued notices of eviction, the subject lands may not be covered by the program.