The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said the exoneration was “the height of stupidity, hypocrisy, and callousness.”
The CHR issued a resolution absolving Aquino, Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala, and Social Welfare Sec. Corazon ‘Dinky’ Soliman from the bloody dispersal of farmers who were demanding food aid from the Aquino government in the face of lingering drought brought by El Nino.
The KMP decried that the CHR also held accountable KMP leaders in Mindanao for the incident, at the commission cited Batas Pambansa 880 which the farmers described as “a Marcos-era edict used to suppress the people right to free assembly and socalled instrumentalization.”
KMP secretary general Antonio Flores noted that “nowhere in the CHR resolution can you find a single mention of the landlord President’s name, Alcala and Soliman who are the most responsible for criminal negligence for the outright denial of the people’s right to food.”
Flores said added that “the CHR bowed and yielded to Malacanang’s blame-the-victim spin by invoking BP 880 which is no less than a Marcos edict to suppress the freedom of assembly.”
“By invoking BP 880, the CHR committed a violation of the peoples’ right and has been an instrument in further suppressing the truth behind the lingering poverty and hunger suffered by farmers,” he said.
Flores also lamented that the CHR had “gone too far in accusing farmers’ of alleged non-compliance with this Marcos edict to justify the CHR’s so-called ‘deception and instrumentalization’ of the poor and the marginalized to taint the legitimacy of the Kidapawan farmers demand for food aid.”
“Instead of addressing the drought by extending support to farmers, the landlord government that the CHR protects in its resolution responded with fascist measures to silence farmers’ demand for food. In fact, the Kidapawan carnage is the culmination of Oplan Bayanihan’s implementation against farmers suffering from drought,” Flores also said.
