MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 24, 2013) – Human rights group Karapatan has demanded the pullout of government troops and militias at the Hacienda Luisita sugar plantation in Tarlac province in Luzon.
It accused the state forces of violating rights of the farmers in the plantation following the arrest of at least 8 workers who tried to stop the Tarlac Development Corporation (TADECO) from bulldozing their rice fields in the village of Balete.
Karapatan identified those arrested as Vicente Sambo, Rod Acosta and his mother Eufemia Acosta; Ronald Sakay; Jose and Elsa Baldiviano; and, Manuel and Mamerto Mandigma. The two women were later released, while six others are still detained at police camp in Tarlac.
“We demand the immediate release of the six farm workers victimized by (President) Benigno Aquino’s ultimate power trip to protect the interests of the Cojuangco-Aquino family. The Aquino government should stop using the military and other state forces to resolve the long-standing agrarian dispute in Hacienda Luisita, or elsewhere in the country where such conflict is widespread,” Karapatan Secretary-General Cristina Palabay said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
She said police and armed TADECO guards and members of the 3rd Mechanized Battalion set up a camp in the areas where the farmers have started cultivating and planting rice as an assertion of their ownership to the lands inside the hacienda which is allegedly part of the government’s agrarian reform program.
Palabay said the distribution of the Hacienda Luisita lands to the workers-farmers has long been stalled as the “Cojuangcos and Aquinos continue to resist court orders, and instead, resorts to the use of force; flaunting their arrogance because a member of the clan is now the Commander in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.”
Palabay said: “This is not the first time that such arrests and other gross human rights violations happened. We have not forgotten the series of killings of farmers and leaders of AMBALA and ULWU, and the massacre that were committed against the rightful owners, the worker-farmers, of Hacienda Luisita.”
“This same scenario is happening in many parts of the country. This is how blood-stained the hands of the Aquino government are. And, the people are keeping tabs,” she said.
The administrator of the Hacienda Luisita has previously denied all accusations against them.
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