Farm leader helping in land reform slain

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO— Christmas Eve was far from festive and quiet in Pampanga province when a farm leader was shot and killed in a case believed to be linked to his work as a peasant organizer.

Jaime Sotto, who was helping 80 farmers who had staked a claim over lands beside the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEx) in Floridablanca town in Pampanga, was shot on his way home.

Sotto, chair of the barangay agrarian reform committee in Barangay Santol, was driving a motorcycle with his 10-year-old daughter at Purok 7 in Barangay San Jose when the gunman opened fire around 6 p.m., police said.

Sotto died from several bullet wounds. A bullet wounded his daughter, according to Sotto’s wife, Merly.

Investigators found five spent shells fired from a .45-cal pistol at the crime scene, said Senior Supt. Joel Consulta, Pampanga police director.

The gunman was on a motorcycle driven by another man, but their motive for the attack had not yet been established, Consulta said.

Merly said she suspected that the ambush may be related to the farmers’ campaign to acquire the 164-hectare land of the late Ramon Joven Sr.

The Joven family had protested when the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) placed the property under the coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, saying it was certified to be “idle and untenanted.”

The farmers were issued emancipation patents for the Joven landholding, which were declared null and void in 2008. Their petition to replace the land patents with certificates of land ownership award from DAR is pending in the Office of the President.

However, a Floridablanca ordinance was enforced in 2008 declaring a 5-kilometer radius along the stretch of the Floridablanca interchange in the SCTEx as an economic zone, including the Joven property.

In 2010, DAR ordered the Joven family to cease and desist from “further introducing activities” on the property.

In February, the farmers picketed the property. —TONETTE OREJAS