JUSTICE FOR TINANG 11: THE RIGHT TO TILL IS JUST!
This note condemns the police for the recent harassment of farmers and peasant advocates in Hacienda Tinang in Concepcion, Tarlac. Prior to the arrest, agrarian reform advocates visited the hacienda to aid and show solidarity with the agrarian reform beneficiaries still struggling to claim the land that they've been awarded by the Department of Agrarian Reform since 1995.
However, on that sane day they conduct land clearing and cultivation activities, authorities, about 20 fully armed men showed up and put a stop to their action. A scuffle ensued until about 90 are arrested without warrant and without any clear charges nor wrongdoing.
According to Anakpawis, the farmers of Hacienda Tinang have been fighting for their land rights for almost three decades due to the concealment of Certificates of Land Ownership Awards, which classify 236 ARBs as "co-owners" of a 200-hectare plot of land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
However, former Congressman Noel Villanueva with his "Tinang Samahang Nayon Multipurpose Cooperative" opposed the said activity by claiming that the contested hacienda as theirs and not from the intended recipients. The said "cooperative" even resort to rabid anticommunist rhetoric as they condemn peasant groups and beneficiaries as that of "coddling with the enemy." One policeman who participated in the arrest justified his action claiming that the participant as a "member of the New Peoples Army."
The fact that for a long time farmers continue to remain landless, impoverished, and hungry, that the agrarian reform program of the government failed to live it's purpose as it favours that of entrenched interests. That, by seeing Villanueva, along with his "cooperative" and the police trying to disrupt a peaceful activity, such actions shows that entrenched interests- that of the landgrabbers and corrupt bureaucrats whose interests in Hacienda Tinang trumps that of the farmer and its desire to cultivate land in order to relieve escalating hunger as food prices continue to rise- and that's way far from what the Duterte administration claims "having commitment to the implementation of the agrarian reform program." Landgrabbers like Villanueva and his pseudo-cooperative, using antiinsurgency rhetoric, obviously shows the interest they're trying to assert in trying to maneuver claims in favour of theirs.
Furthermore, the arrests of farmers and agrarian reform advocates, like all others fighting for land, freedom, and justice also shows its obvious proof that the authorities have utter disrespect to civil liberties- that of right to assembly, speech, as well as the right to till their own land, particularly that of the land awarded by the same Department of Agrarian Reform decades ago.