The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said in an advisory yesterday the farmers will encamp at the Department of Agrarian Reform in Quezon City on Nov. 18 and will march to Manila on November 19.
KMP Chair Rafael Mariano said “no amount of ‘no permit – no rally’ policy can block farmers caravan and marches. We will assert our way to Manila. We will assert our right to protest.”
“Obama’s attendance in the summit is a signal to APEC heads of state to harden their commitment to further remove all barriers to so-called free trade and the total eradication of protectionism,” Mariano said.
Mariano said “Obama will use the Summit as a vehicle to drag APEC members to the anti- people Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) whose socalled investor-state dispute settlement system will not only remove legal barriers to trade but trample upon the sovereignty of countries by giving foreign investors and big businesses the right to take legal action against states whose policies are considered hindrance to their profit- taking.”
“The TPPA’s investor- state dispute settlement system is a death warrant on our country’s sovereignty,” said Mariano, adding that “land monopoly by big landlords, transnational agro-corporations and local agribusinesses has left millions of farmers on the brink of dislocation and landlessness, poverty, and hunger.”
Mariano noted that already, liberalized trade has already led to dislocation of people in the agriculture sector, noting that because of huge rice importation, “the average price of farmers palay (unhusked rice) is now pegged at P14 per kilogram while the price of milled rice is now pegged at an average of P42 per kilo.”
He lamented that “the Aquino government’s over-reliance on imported food has resulted to widespread landgrabbing in the form of land-use conversion, land speculation, and crops conversion.”
“The so-called free trade being peddled by the APEC, the World Trade Organization, and now the TPPA grabbed farmers’ lands and destroyed our country’s food self-sufficiency and food security,” Mariano added.
