ANGELES CITY – The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) strongly denounced yesterday Pres. Duterte for “ordering the state forces to arrest and shoot farmers who are engaged in land occupation and collective cultivation activities,” saying this would constitute genocide.
“Only a mad leader like Duterte would give direct orders to kill his citizens and constituents. Duterte can threaten us all he wants but farmers will not falter and we will not stop defending our right to land and livelihood,” KMP chairperson Danilo Ramos said in a statement yesterday.
Ramos noted that “seven out of ten farmers do not own the land they till. They are actually tilling lands that they do not own. Ipapapatay ba lahat ni Duterte ang mga magsasakang nakikisaka sa lupa? Duterte will start a genocide and mass murder.”
“As if Oplan Kapayapaan and militarization were not yet enough in terrorizing farmers in peasant communities and farm lands, Duterte virtually issued a shoot to kill order against farmers cultivating the land,” he said.
Ramos recalled Duterte as saying: “My order to the police is to shoot them. If they resist violently, shoot them, and if they die, I do not care.”
He noted that “Duterte is encouraging the mass murder and even the genocide of Filipino farmers. We will continue to hold him accountable for peasant killings and human rights violations in rural communities.”
Ramos said the group Tanggol Magsasaka has documented 172 farmers killed under the Duterte administration.
He stressed that farmers’ “land occupation and cultivation activities are not coercive and in fact collective efforts of farmers to assert genuine land reform. Farmers are cultivating idle agricultural lands to make them productive and to produce food crops. Sinasaka ng mga magbubukid na walang lupa ang mga tiwangwang na lupa para may makain.”
Lamenting the alleged failure of the government’s land reform program, Ramos noted that “more than 10,000 cases of Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) cancellations are pending at the Department of Agrarian Reform. Farmers got old and sick following up their land cases at DAR but they never got to own the land that they have been tilling for decades.”
“Farmers demanded for genuine land reform and free land distribution and held many dialogues with DAR and Duterte himself but the government turned these down by siding with landlords and oligarchs. Farmers took it upon themselves to realize genuine land reform through collective land cultivation,” Ramos also said.
