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INTERNATIONAL FACT FINDING MISSIONS CONFIRMS CARP FAILURE
Farmers nearly massacred in
Central Mindanao University, 9 July 2007
An International Fact-Finding Mission (IFFM) today showcased the struggle of the farmers in Central Mindanao University (CMU) as a confirmation of the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) to redistribute land to farmers; and joined the call for the junking or non-extension of the “bogus” program beyond 2008.
PRESS RELEASE
July 8, 2007
An International Fact-Finding Mission (IFFM) today showcased the struggle of the farmers in Central Mindanao University (CMU) as a confirmation of the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) to redistribute land to farmers; and joined the call for the junking or non-extension of the “bogus” program beyond 2008.
International delegates from India, Indonesia, and the United States joined the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas’ (KMP) organized IFFM in Maramag, Bukidnon from July 5-8. They investigated the recent “near massacre” of farmers engaged in a historic struggle for land akin to that of Hacienda Luisita.
They found that 200 farmers belonging to the group Buffalo-Tamaraw- Limus (BTL) were fired at using shotguns and M-16 rifles by almost 30 CMU security guards last June 22. That day, the farmers decided to till their rice fields after three months of being prevented by the CMU administration from doing so because of the expiration of a 5-year lease agreement between the university and BTL. When farmers refused to stop working and give up farming implements that the security guards wanted to confiscate, they were showered with bullets upon the instruction of the the CMU Chief of Security, Nelson Martinez. The Maramag police, led by its chief Sr. Inspector Salvador Aranas, stood by and did nothing, residents told the IFFM team.
Among the victims who testified to being nearly killed was Noralyn Galan, a 33-year old pregnant woman. She was hospitalized for three days after the incident and almost lost her baby.
“The CMU should desist from harassing and preventing the peaceful cultivation of the land by the farmers. Does it want its hands tainted with blood?” said Anakpawis Rep. and KMP chairperson Rafael Mariano.
The BTL case is a classic example of the failure of the 19-year old CARP in many parts of rural Philippines. In 1987, the Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudictaion Board awarded the farmers, mostly CMU employees, 400 hectares under the land reform program. The CMU brought the case to the Court of Appeals in 1991, and lost. But the Supreme Court in 1992 overturned the lower court’s decision and ruled in favor of the CMU on the grounds that land use “for educational purposes” were among the CARP’s exemptions But the farmers refused to vacate the land and asserted their rights through collective and militant struggle, even when these led to direct confrontations with CMU’s security agents. With support from KMP and its national and international networks, CMU and the BTL farmers in 2002 signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), which stipulates that the farmers will lease the land for P4,000 per hectare per year. The said lease expired last March 10, 2007.
But according to Jun Macote, BTL president, they cannot yet be evicted because CMU has not found them a suitable relocation site as stipulated in the MOA. Two sites were offered early this year, but he said that even Bukidnon Rep. Miguel Zubiri, one of the parties to the agreement, agreed that these were too remote to be livable.
In a dialogue with the IFFM last July 7, Municipal Agrarian Reform Officer Venerando Oro confirmed that no relocation site has been found. “In the meantime, we must be allowed to till our lands, because our families have nothing to eat,” Macote said. The IFFM team was told that many of the farmers’ children have fallen sick because of malnutrition, and have stopped schooling since they have been harassed to leave the land.
“I see here a violation of the human rights of peasants, especially the right to food that is among those enshrined in the United Nations Human Rights Declaration,” said Biplap Halim, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) and Indian Federation of Toiling Peasants (IFTOP).
Meanwhile, Ryan Earheart, a geography professor at City University in New York, commended the BTL farmers’ sustainable agriculture practices. “We increasingly see around the world the limits of agriculture based on chemical inputs. Sustainable agriculture is the wave of the future. The CMU has a chance to be at the front of this movement by allowing BTL farmers to plant and experiment with traditional rice varieties,” said Earheart.
Erpan Faryadi, vice-chairman for internal affairs of APC and secretary-general of Alyansi Grekan Reforma Agrarya (AGRA), said that “If the Arroyo government is serious about land reform, it shouldn’t allow the CMU to take away the land from small farmers and let it be used by agri-businesses.” The IFFM team found out that the CMU currently leases land to sugarcane and cassava plantations; and that it intends to lease the BTL land to the multinational Dole and the export fruit company Lapanday.
According to Danilo Ramos, secretary-general of APC and KMP, “The farmers of CMU are victimized, and not benefited, by CARP. It was only by their own resistance that they were able to continue living on the land, their only source of life. They will not abandon their struggle now. It is President Arroyo who must abandon its bogus land reform program.”
The IFFM is sponsored by the APC, People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty (PCFS), and Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific (PANAP). It was organized by KMP ang Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (SENTRA); and hosted by The Bukidnon Free Farmers and Agricultural Laborers Association (Buffalo), Tried Agricultural Movers Association of Rural Active Workers (Tamaraw) and Landless Inhabitants of Musuan (Limus) or BTL and Kahugpungan sa Mag-uuma sa Bukidnon (Kasama-Bukidnon).
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