Land conflict seen in slay of 4 in Army camp

GABALDON, Nueva Ecija—Eva, a 43-year-old farmer, was helping put up temporary huts on Saturday when she heard successive gunshots on a farm inside the Fort Magsaysay military reservation in Barangay San Isidro in Laur town, Nueva Ecija province.

Eva said she saw people running, so she leaped into a swamp and hid there until the firing ended.

The shots were fired by five men who killed farmers Elejo Barbado, Emerencia dela Rosa, Violeta Mercado and Gaudencio Bagalay as they tilled the fields on portions of a 3,100-hectare land covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in 1992.

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) on Monday sent an investigator to help in the police probe, said Romeo Cordero, the provincial agrarian reform officer.

Investigators are looking at land dispute as a likely motive for the attack, said Senior Insp. Romualdo Lopez, acting town police chief.

The Department of National Defense transferred the property to the DAR through a deed of transfer benefiting farmers displaced by Mt. Pinatubo’s 1991 eruptions, as prescribed by a 1992 executive order issued by then President Corazon Aquino.

The farmers killed on Saturday were among 21 residents of Barangay Bagting in Gabaldon town who cultivated lands at Sitio Minalkat in Barangay San Isidro in Laur, hoping to become CARP beneficiaries, said Eva, who returned to this town on Sunday along with the other farmers.

Tomas Guevarra, leader of the Alyansa ng mga Magsasakang Nagkakaisa 3100 (Almana 3100), said his group invited the victims’ families  and other farmers, whose houses were hit by recent landslides in Gabaldon, to become beneficiaries of the 3,100 hectares reserved for CARP.

But the attack forced the farmers to leave the village, Eva said.

Bagalay, 58, Dela Rosa, 58, and her sister, Mercado, 57, ran toward the nipa huts but the attackers pursued and shot them, Eva said.

Bagalay’s wife, Angelita, 53, said they started looking for a new home because their house in Gabaldon stands on a lot that started to erode following rains dumped by Typhoons “Lando” and “Nona” in 2015.

Barbado, 53, was a bus driver who had volunteered to help build the huts for a neighbor. He tried to flee with a boy when he heard the shots but he was hit, witnesses said. The boy was wounded.

Another farmer, Angelita Milan, was hit in the left leg.

Barbado’s daughter, Evangeline, 21, said, “My father just wanted to help. He had dreams so he wanted us to finish school.”

On Monday, Cordero said a DAR screening committee completed deliberations on the applications for certificates of land ownership award for one of the lots. He said 329 applicants were eligible for DAR land patents.

The Fort Magsaysay military reservation spans 73,000 ha, based on Presidential Proclamation Order No. 237 that was issued in 1956 by then President Ramon Magsaysay. It serves as headquarters of the 7th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army. With reports from Anselmo Roque and Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon