UMA Acting Chairperson John Milton Lozande said that Aquino can immediately prove his sincerity in “punishing wrongdoers” by “simply looking into strong complaints made against Torres by Hacienda Luisita farmers last year, which are now gathering dust at the Department of Justice (DOJ).”
Complaints of malicious mischief, grave threats and grave coercion against Torres and her alleged cohorts were filed in October 2014 at the DOJ, by Luisita farmers assisted by lawyer Jobert Pahilga of the Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (Sentra).
Torres is embroiled in a sugar smuggling scandal at the Bureau of Customs (BOC), where she allegedly namedropped the President for the release of tons of smuggled sugar. She claimed that she leased lands at the Hacienda Luisita and that they planted together.
“Malacanang and even DAR Sec. delos Reyes keep on harping empty words distancing themselves from Virgie Torres. But they are all actually complicit in her illegal transactions,” said Rudy Corpuz, vice-chairperson of the Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala).
Aambala is UMA’s local affiliate in Tarlac province.
Corpuz noted that Torres had already admitted that she was into leasing lands in Hacienda Luisita, a practice which victimizes supposed farmworker-beneficiaries of the 2012 Supreme Court decision for total land distribution in the controversial sugar estate.
“We believe that the DAR has complete knowledge of Torres’s transactions in Luisita. According to the victims, even local DAR lawyers and employees go out of their way to personally facilitate transactions and even the violent eviction of farmers and destruction of their food crops to make way for Torres’s sugarcane aryendo with the Cojuangco-Aquinos,” said Lozande.
Ambala noted that “Torres is practically a resident of Barangay Mapalacsiao in Hacienda Luisita, which she frequents because she has effective control over at least 200 hectares of land in this barangay alone.”
“Torres also allegedly maintains a garage of heavy equipment and a storage house for farm inputs also within Mapalacsiao,” Ambala added.
Corpuz also said Torres and DAR officials are apparently backed by “goons of the Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco) owned by the President’s kin, and by the police and military officers under their command.”
He noted that “even the pro-landlord Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and its Extension with Reforms (CARPER) prohibit the sale or lease of farmlots allocated through land reform, for a ten-year holding period.”
