Peasant group condemns continued attacks on peasants, says former landlord’s greed, oppression must end now
Task Force Mapalad
May 25, 2021
National peasant federation Task Force Mapalad on Tuesday condemned the violence and lawlessness being carried out by anti-agrarian reform forces in a sugar plantation in Capiz province that have kept farmers in the area in constant fear, danger, and hunger.
“These brazen acts of injustice and mockery of the rule of must stop now. The greed of landlords has reached the level of madness. They have taken the law into their own hands. They are acting like oppressive mini-gods in their bailiwicks, fearing no one, threatening, hurting, and killing anyone who catches their ire,” said Teresita Tarlac, president of TFM’s Negros-Panay Chapter.
TFM issued the statement following the May 24, 2021 shooting of two of its farmer-members, Jose Sony Billonid, 49, and Bernard Amistoso, 51, in Brgy. Dulangan, Pilar, Capiz by assailants believed to have links with the former owner of a 188-hectare hacienda in the area.
The plantation, used to be owned by Nemesio Tan and managed by his administrator Ferdinand Bacanto, who is also the village chief of Culilang, is already owned by about TFM 100 farmers belonging to the Montecarlo Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organization (Montecarba).
They were named as beneficiaries of the landholding through certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) issued by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in 1997 or 23 years ago.
The bullet that hit the left side of Billonid’s stomach exited to the right side of his abdomen. Billonid, a father of five, needed to undergo surgery as the shooting damaged his digestive organs. Amistoso was shot in the arm and is already in stable condition.
Farmers barred by former landowner’s camp from working in their own land
On Tuesday morning, before the shooting incident took place past 8 p.m., Montecarba farmers trooped to the police station in Capiz’s President Roxas town to report that they could not work on their landholding because Bacanto’s camp was barring them from entering the plantation, where they were installed by the DAR earlier this month.
“We believe that the shooting incident is linked to our move to report to the authorities what was happening in our land. After more than two decades of owning the land as CLOA holders, we were unable to till it and benefit from it because it was still the camp of the former landowner who was profiting from the plantation that they no longer own,” said 69-year-old Pancho Arroyo, among the leaders of TFM-Montecarba.
“When finally, the DAR installed us on our land just this month, the camp of the former landowner still refused to vacate the plantation and continued planting sugarcane in our landholding. They continue to threaten us and forbid us from working in our land,” added Arroyo.
Former landowner continues profiting from land already owned by farmers
Records from the DAR showed that between 1997 and 2000, at least a total of P13.55 million had been deposited by the Land Bank of the Philippines in Nemesio Tan’s behalf as just compensation for acquiring his landholding for CARP.
At a net income of at least P50,000 per hectare per year from sugarcane farming, it is estimated that Montecarba farmers had lost total earnings of at least P216 million or P9.4 million annually in the last 23 years that they were unable to make the 188-hectare plantation productive because of the former landowner’s refusal to give up control of the property and the DAR’s failure to immediately install the CLOA holders in the landholding.
Series of threats, violence since 2015
Tuesday’s shooting incident was part of a series of threats and violence that the Montecarba farmers suffered since they’ve started their campaign in 2015 to take occupy and take control of the landholding awarded to them by the DAR.
“Our suffering has continued. When those from the camp of our former landowner learned about our campaign, they started to drive us away from the land and bulldoze our houses, until the violence culminated in the death of Orlando Eslana in 2017. Adding insult to our already serious injury is the shooting of my husband Sony and fellow farmer, Bernard,” said Teresita Billonid, wife of one of the casualties in the May 24 shooting and farmer-leader of Montecarba.
Orlando Eslana, 49, died in the shooting incident in February 2017 in Brgy. Culilang, President Roxas town days after he joined fellow agrarian reform beneficiaries in occupying a portion of the landholding in Pilar town.
The other four victims — Ana Bocala, Nida Amo, Adel Vergara, and Melinda Eslana Arroyo – survived the attack. Arroyo, the sister of Orlando, got paralyzed, with the bullet still stuck in her head.
Duterte urged to intervene, stop violence now
“This violence and injustice must stop now. Otherwise, our lives will always be in danger until all of our blood spills on the land that should have been the source of our strength and longevity,” said Billonid.
“The camp of the former landowner does not respect anyone, not the DAR, not the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, which they claim is being illegally implemented, not the country’s highest official, who decided that the landholding legally belongs to us,” she said.
“We have nowhere else to go. The law is already on our side, but still, we’re are being shot and killed. We don’t violence to beget violence. Thus, we want an urgent response from President Duterte. He must intervene now and end our long suffering. Peace should be restored and the perpetrators must be brough to justice,” said Billonid.
Background of the land case
The DAR started installing the farmers in the landholding this month after the Office of the President (OP) dismissed the petition of Nemesio Tan’s heirs to retain ownership of the sugar plantation, cancel the CLOAs issued to the farmers, and stop the DAR from implementing agrarian reform in the property.
In the same order, the OP found no merit to uphold the ruling of the Regional Trial Court-Branch18 Special Agrarian Court in Roxas City that declared that the DAR had erred in implementing the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in the Nemesio Tan Estate because it carried out the CARP in reverse by generating CLOAs for Montercarba farmers, instead of first notifying Tan that his property had already been placed under the program and compensating him in exchange for his land. The OP upheld the May 15, 2017 order of then DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano that asserted that while the CLOAs were issued ahead of the certificate of deposit of just compensation for Tan, in violation of the procedures under Section 16 of R.A. 6657, the procedural infirmities did not invalidate the coverage of the landholding under the CARP.
