On the occasion of the 13th year of the Hacienda Luisita massacre, farmers from the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas dared Duterte supporters to demand justice for the massacre victims and make accountable the Cojuangco-Aquinos, particularly former President Benigno Aquino III, for the alleged social injustices and human rights abuses in Luisita.
“For rabid Duterte supporters who are against the so-called Yellowtards and the Liberal Party, today is the best day to rant, rage and direct all your expletives at the Cojuangco-Aquinos. Thirteen years after Hacienda Luisita massacre, no one was arrested, put to trial and punished for the carnage that killed seven farmworkers on November 16, 20114. We dare all of Duterte’s loyal disciples to remember and demand justice for Luisita,” said Danilo Ramos, chairperson of KMP, in a statement.
“We dare all DDS to condemn the violence at Luisita and the arrest of Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Asyenda Luisita (AMBALA) leader Florida ‘Pong’ Sibayan, also a survivor of the 2004 Hacienda Luisita massacre. We dare all of you to press Duterte on the free distribution of Hacienda Luisita to farmers, the rightful owners of the land,” said Ramos.
KMP earlier lambasted Duterte for being particularly silent on the issue of Hacienda Luisita and making the Cojuangco-Aquinos accountable for the massacre and the string of human rights violations in the agricultural estate.
“Duterte have long unveiled himself as pro-landlord and pro-oligarch,” he said.
Two years into his administration, Duterte did nothing to prosecute the family of former President Benigno Aquino III, said Ramos.
With that, Duterte now has supreme accountability on the continued denial of justice for Hacienda Luisita massacre and human rights victims, said Ramos.
The KMP also slammed the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the National Stakeholders Forum on Land Use Conversion that the agency sponsored.
The KMP said that under the guise of holding a consultative meeting with stakeholders, DAR aims to hasten the bureaucratic processes on the conversion of lands.
“This is a total reversal of what former agrarian reform Secretary Rafael ‘Ka Paeng’ Mariano asserted during his term — a two-year moratorium on land-use conversion,”
the KMP said.
“The primary disposition of lands should be for agriculture and food production,” said Antonio Flores, secretary general of KMP.
Last year, Mariano proposed to President Rodrigo Duterte and the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) the issuance of an Executive Order on the moratorium on land-use conversion but economic managers from the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and Department of Finance (DoF) rigged the draft and the executive order never saw the light of day, Flores said.
Finance chief Carlos Dominguez even expressed in one cabinet meeting that all public lands should be convertible, to which Mariano staunchly objected, said Flores.
“This latest move from DAR is clearly a direction towards the neoliberal path to convert more lands for businesses, commercial use and investment for the benefit of local and foreign businesses,” said Flores.
“The unimpeded drive towards land conversion is increasingly placing the domestic agriculture and the national economy at great risk,” he added.
KMP said that in the last three decades, land use conversion has contributed significantly in exacerbating the country’s state of food insecurity.
“Vast tract of rice and corn lands in Central and Southern Luzon were converted to real estate, eco-tourism and economic zones. In Mindanao, thousands of hectares of productive lands were converted to foreign corporate plantations. We cannot eat concrete and oil palm trees. We need to preserve our lands for food production and for future generations,” Flores said.
“Land use conversion has been one of the main modes by which big landlords and foreign corporations, aided by the government, have been able to undermine land reform and displace countless peasant families from their lands.”
Flores said data from the DAR show that between 1988 and 2016, almost a hundred thousand hectares of land were approved for conversion. The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) said that an average of 165,000 hectares of irrigated prime agricultural lands are converted to other uses annually. These are varying data that may in fact account for just a segment of the actual extent of land use conversion in the country.
Flores said that based on government data, some 97,592.5 hectares of land awarded to agrarian reform beneficiaries were converted into non-agricultural purposes.
The extensive conversion of farmlands for non-agricultural purposes has invariably led to the cancellation of Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) and Emancipation Patents (EP) of thousands of peasants and their eviction from their places of livelihood.
The conservative government data on land-use conversion are as follows:
Top provinces: Batangas – 10,601 hectares; Cavite – 6,790 hectares; Laguna – 5,7443 ; hectares; Rizal – 1,937 hectares; Quezon – 1,645 hectares; Bulacan – 1,442 hectares and rest of the country – 12,151 hectares
Top regions: CALABARZON – 26,739 ‘ hectares; Western Visayas – 2,416 hectares; Central Luzon – 3,937 hectares; Northern Mindanao – 1,652 hectares; SOCSKSARGEN – 1,411 hectares and rest of the country – 4,152 hectares.
Previous land reform laws and programs, including the CARP and its various reincarnations, have all failed in breaking up the land monopoly of big landlords owing to their generally flawed framework which includes the institutionalization of land-use conversion.
Among the agricultural lands in threat of total conversion include the Hacienda Yulo in Laguna (7,100 hectares), Hacienda Looc in Batangas (8,650 hectares), Hacienda Dolores in Pampanga (700 hectares), Clark Green City Project in Tarlac and Pampanga (36,000 hectares) and Araneta lands in Bulacan (3,000 hectares).
