Farmers find no protection in land titles

FARMER Bobet Odtuhan shows the scar of a bullet wound that he suffered when armed men fired at him and three other farmers as they were harvesting rice in their farm in Barangay Base Camp. JIGGER JERUSALEM / INQUIRER MINDANAO

MARAMAG, Bukidnon—Farmers in Barangay Base Camp here waited 16 years to become holders of titles to the land they are tilling.

It was all just on paper, however, as the farmers, who had been tilling the land since the Marcos regime, continue to live in fear amid cases of harassment by an armed group that supposedly wants the farmers driven out to pave the way for the entry of an agro-industrial company.

The farmers said the armed men, identified with a politician, set up camp on a portion of the 720-hectare land here, which was covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), and began harassing occupants by firing shots and brandishing high-powered weapons since late last year.

They alleged that a big-time politician in Bukidnon is behind the entry of the armed men, although one of the guards insisted that a tribal leader is the one who hired them to secure the area.

The tribal clan, they said, has claimed the area to be part of its ancestral domain.

Irene Sanchez, president of the Bukidnon Landless and Actual Tillers Association (Buklata), said the land ownership documents that the farmers possess are authentic. She showed copies of the certificates of land ownership award (Cloa) and receipts issued by the provincial treasurer’s office of Bukidnon showing payment of realty taxes.

“If our Cloas are fake, they would not have accepted our payment and issued us receipts,” said Sanchez.

Buklata is a group of former employees of Bukidnon Farms Inc. (BFI), reportedly owned by businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., but which was taken over by the government in 1986. Most BFI members had worked as tillers.

236 beneficiaries

In 1990, Sanchez said the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) began screening land claimants and after 16 years of waiting, 236 beneficiaries were given Cloas. The farmers were awarded with a hectare of farm each.

Other Buklata members are still waiting.

A certification signed by Nida Acuna, Maramag municipal agrarian reform program officer, dated March 2, 2015, showed the 236 Bukalata members as new owners of the BFI land. Most of it is now planted with rice.

Buklata member Ifraim Alayon said since the distribution of the Cloa, farmers have been tilling the land in peace, and had even taken the initiative of marking boundaries, saving the DAR and other government agencies time and resources.

Farmer shot dead

The trouble started when a farmer, Larry Algora, was shot dead inside his home in October 2015. Algora was not a Buklata member but was one of the CARP beneficiaries. His killing is believed to have been carried out by hired guns.

On Feb. 13, 2016, a Bobet Odtuhan, 48, who was employed as harvester in a farm lot in the Buklata homestead, was shot several times, according to a Maramag police report. Odtuhan survived.

He recounted to the Inquirer that he was with three others when armed men in blue uniforms approached them and began firing AK-47 assault rifles from a few hundred meters away.

“When the shooting started, all my companions dropped on their bellies, but I remained standing and tried to see their (shooters) faces. That’s when I saw they were using AK-47s,” he said.

Odtuhan was certain the assailants had intent to kill but added that he was not afraid to die and continued to work in the fields.

No police action

Base Camp residents claimed police have not acted on reports of violence in the area.

Maramag police chief, Insp. Erwin Naelga, could not be contacted for comment.

When approached by journalists during an on-site inspection of the area, a man who identified himself as Benito from Maguindanao, who represented the group of AK-47-wielding guards, said they were hired by the Daguiwa-as clan to protect the area from intruders.

A few moments later, when asked again if the armed men were working for a Bukidnon politician, he replied in the affirmative.

He, however, denied they were behind the shooting of Odtuhan although he said they engaged a group of armed men, who had attacked their detachment, in a gunfight.

Legal battle

Documents obtained by the Inquirer showed that the Daguiwa-as clan, through Datu Piang Daguiwa-as, has been engaged in a legal battle with BFI over what the clan said is ancestral land in Barangay Maraymaray in Don Carlos town.

Buklata members have long suspected that the lumad were used only as a front by a politician, who wants to drive farmers away to lease the land to a multinational. Jigger Jerusalem, Inquirer Mindanao