Nueva Ecija farmers seek Aquino help vs Army

PALAYAN CITY, Nueva Ecija—Farmers from different barangays here have urged President Benigno Aquino III to stop the military from taking over a 200-hectare land that their families have been tilling for generations.

In a forum on Thursday, Paulo Bautista, 78, presented receipts showing his father had been paying taxes since 1937 for a parcel of land in the former Bongabon stockfarm here.

Bautista said by taking their farmlands in the barangays of Caballero and Ganaderia so these can be converted and developed into a housing area for soldiers, the military seems working against the rice sufficiency program of the Aquino administration.

Earlier, a group of 14 farmers challenged in the Court of Appeals a decision of Judge Evelyn Atienza-Turla of the Palayan City Regional Trial Court Branch 40 which ordered them to vacate the area.

The group sued outgoing Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang, Lt. Col. Benito Doniego Jr. and Lt. Col. Alfredo Patarata saying the AFP, through soldiers from the Army’s 7th Infantry Division based in Fort Magsaysay, entered their land without any authority from the Department of Agrarian Reform and the courts in March 2013.

The farmers also accused the military of using “stealth, strategy, force, threat and intimidation” to occupy the farmlands.

The 14 farmers who sued the AFP officials were Julius Bautista, Carmelita Manayan, Rufino Flores, Garvacio Aregando and Arsenio Laranang of Barangay Caballero; Florentina Juan, Bienvenido Baldemor, Elizalde Estigoy, Julio Diaz, Wenceslao Bautista, Carmelita Valmote, Jose Ginnodela Merced, Dalisay Gadian and Gideon Acosta.

They were among the 200 farmers who said their families have been tilling the land being claimed by the military for at least 10 years.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources described the farmland, a titled property owned by the Palayan City government, as a “patrimonial property” or a registered property in the name of the Philippine government.

Laranang, a retired Army sergeant, said he has been tilling his 3-ha land since 1984 when he was still an Army private.

Catapang and the other respondents, in their reply to the farmers’ petition, said the farmlands form part of the military reservation in Nueva Ecija.

They said the AFP, through the Army, has been occupying and possessing the property since 1955 when then President Ramon Magsaysay issued Presidential Proclamation No. 237, reserving the area for military purposes and withdrawing them from sale or settlement.

The proclamation was amended on March 13, 2006 when then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation No. 1033, which included the 200 ha land among the areas reserved for the off-base housing site for Army soldiers.

The farmers, in their petition, said Doniego initially told them that the Army was putting up a detachment of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit to guard forests there.

Later, however, Doniego told them they would be ejected from their farms, “whether we liked it or not.”

The farmers then filed a civil case against the military for forcible entry in the Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) here, which ruled in their favor on Oct. 8, 2013.

The case was elevated to the Palayan City RTC Branch 40 which reversed the MTCC decision in its ruling on Dec. 9, 2014.

The farmers assailed the decision and filed a motion for reconsideration but their lawyer, Feliciano Buenaventura, withdrew from the case for health reasons. Armand Galang, Inquirer Central Luzon