The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) denounced yesterday the DAR “for resurrecting trumped-up criminal charges against Hacienda Luisita farmers and their supporters.”
UMA acting Chairperson John Milton Lozande said charges of trespassing, physical injuries and direct assault against persons in authority, which were filed by the DAR’s Tarlac office before the Municipal Trial Court (MTC) in Tarlac City , were related to “violent incidents perpetrated by the Cojuangco- Aquino family against Hacienda Luisita farmer-beneficiaries in 2013 and 2014.”
“While the public is clamoring for Pres. Aquino to prove that nobody is above the law – especially not his ‘Kabarilan’ Virgie Torres who is embroiled in sugar smuggling and accused of atrocities against Luisita farmer-beneficiaries – we find this revival of absurd charges against farmers and their staunchest supporters all the more scandalous and highly questionable,” said Lozande.
The respondents in the case included Florida Sibayan, chairperson of UMA’s Tarlac affiliate, members of the Alyansa
ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala), two other Luisita farmers, and six members of the congressional staff and volunteers of Anakpawis Partylist Rep. Fernando Hicap, who recently exposed Torres’s role as “a dummy of the Cojuangco- Aquinos in Hacienda Luisita.”
“Hicap was among those manhandled and arrested by police officers led by then Tarlac City police chief Supt. Bayani Razalan during a fact-finding mission to uncover anomalies in Hacienda Luisita land distribution in September 2013. Razalan ordered the arrest of Hicap, not sparing farmers and other mission delegates, an Australian nun, and Hicap’s staff members and driver, who all tried to explain to police officers that the solon was immune from arrest,” Lozande recalled.
The Cojuangco-controlled Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco) filed charges against them, but the respondents insisted that the conflict was agrarian reform in nature. Last week, however, the DAR in Tarlac unexpectedly brought the case to the MTC.
Hacienda Luisita farmers have been protesting the exclusion of some 260 hectares within the Hacienda which the Supreme Court ordered distributed to farmworkers in 2012. The area was already covered by Notice of Land Reform Coverage (NLC) issued by DAR, but was later exempted from coverage.
Lozande noted that “armed men continued to attack the farmers and bulldozed several farmlots, crops and huts within a 260-hectare contested area claimed by the Cojuangco-Aquinos.
Five farmers were mauled and arrested by police in the clash.
The five were detained and charged with several criminal complaints all of which were either dismissed for lack of evidence or referred to the DAR because the cases clearly constituted an agrarian dispute. “
He also said that “the revival of physical assault charges against Luisita farmers Romeo Corpuz, Ofelia Hernandez and Marcelino Lugay are outrageous.
The three farmers suffered serious injuries in the hands of Cojuangco- Aquino goons in March 2014, but they are now the ones vilified and humiliated by the very government agency created to provide social justice to our farmers.”
Last year, the farm workers filed counter- charges against Torres, Tadeco, police and even the DAR officials involved in the violent hacienda incidents, but these cases have remained dormant at the Department of Justice.
They have also accused Torres of allegedly acting as front for the Tadeco in leasing back from beneficiaries of hand reform in Hacienda Luisita for sugar block farming that allegedly brought back to the Cojuangcos the control of portions of the hacienda they used to own.
