Farmers hailing from Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog marched to Plaza Miranda on Monday, October 21 to campaign for genuine land reform, 52 years after the declaration of Presidential Decree No. 27 of the Marcos Sr. administration.
Peasant groups also slammed the New Agrarian Emancipation Act (NAEA) of the current Marcos Jr. administration, stating that these land reform programs did not provide the solutions needed to address the worsening state of the country’s agriculture and the prevailing food insecurity.
“Farmers remain landless, and rural poverty persists. The Marcos legacy remains – landlessness of the many and affluence of the few. There is no real emancipation of farmers under Marcos’ administration,” said Danilo Ramos, the chairperson of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP).
Stop the attacks on peasant communities
Southern Tagalog farmers, hailing from Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Mindoro also demanded justice and an end for the ongoing human rights violations and abuses in their respective peasant communities.
According to Tanggol Magsasaka, a peasants rights network, farmers make up for the majority of the victims of human rights violations committed by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP).
Peasant groups from the said region added that militarization in the rural communities exacerbated the plight of the farmers and gave way for rampant human rights abuses.
“I am here to seek justice for the death of my son, Jay-el Maligday. He was shot by members of the military last April 7,” Mr. Argana Maligday, a Mangyan-Hanunuo farmer from Bulalacao, Oriental Mindoro, shared his reason for joining the protest.
Maligday furthered that Jay-el was killed because the soldiers accused him of being a member of the New People’s Army (NPA).
“My son’s not a member of the NPA. He was a student at Grace Mission College. There were no bad records of him in our barangay. I do not believe what they are saying. He’s not a rebel,” Maligday stressed.
The province of Oriental Mindoro is among the heavily bombed areas within the Southern Tagalog region. Data gathered from AGHAM stated that the province was bombed eight times from the years 2022 until present.
Tanggol Magsasaka added that bombings especially in these communities not only cause displacement of families but also inflict civilian casualties and disrupts the livelihood of the victims, most of which are peasants.
“We need to continue to unite with other groups to amplify our calls in order for the public to know of our situation. Our area is militarized. We are facing the threat of eviction or displacement because of the government’s grand plans of land-use conversion of our fields,” said Miriam Villanueva, a farmer from Lupang Ramos in Dasmariñas, Cavite.
Villanueva added that farmers also face red-tagging and threats from the state forces and military.
“The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) And Task Force Ugnay’s headquarters are already within our lands. They say it is to ensure our protection. But really, they are on the lookout for our group’s activities because we are part of a progressive group that they have repeatedly red-tagged,” lamented Villanueva.
The peasant groups and rights advocates also urged for the Marcos administration to junk the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, which has been weaponized primarily against farmers and human rights defenders.
“If Marcos is truly after the welfare of the farmers’ that he says he is, then he should immediately junk the Anti-Terror Law, he shouldn’t be at the forefront in intimidating, harassing, and stepping on the rights of the farmers and the people. He should recognize the peasants’ basic rights, their rights to organize and not see them as attacks against his government. He should support and boost the agricultural production the right way, that is, through implementing a genuine agrarian reform,” Villanueva ended.
