Last Sunday, the APC’s were back, together with two truckloads of soldiers in full battle gear, the Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) reported yesterday.
UMA Secretary General Ranmil Echanis said the soldiers were deployed to Barangay Baletewithin the hacienda apparently to secure the ongoing Tarlac Solar Power Project (TSPP), a public-private partnership project of the firm PetroSolar.
The project is within a 500-hectare area which the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) initially confirmed as part of the hacienda which is covered by land reform program ordered for implementation by the Supreme Court in 2011.
The Cojuangco family, which used to own the entire hacienda, has insisted that the 500-hectare site is not covered by land reform.
The project site had been fenced off to prevent farm workers from accessing the solar power construction wherethey used to plant crops.
Echanis said that two APC’s and the soldiers arrived at about 4 p.m. last Sunday. “The last time such personnel and equipment were deployed in Hacienda Luisita, they were used to disperse the historic people’s strike on Nov. 16, 2004, massacre resulted,” he recalled.
He said UMA is blaming Pres. Aquino “for allowing renewed militarization and harassment of farmers in Hacienda Luisita.”
“A company headquarters of the 31st Infantry Battalion PA, 3rd Mechanized Battalion is located right smack in this disputed agricultural area in Balete,” he reported.
Echanis said the President, through the Department of Energy (DoE) which implements the PPP projects along with PetroSolar and the DAR which holds jurisdiction over these disputed agricultural areas, must be held liable for this move to silence the farming community and preempt more protests against this new landgrabbing modus.”
“State troopers and military logistics can easily be deployed in and out of Hacienda Luisita because of its proximity to the AFP Northern Luzon (Nolcom) Command Headquarters, right across from the MacArthur Highway entrance of Hacienda Luisita in San Miguel, Tarlac City; and the Training and Doctrine Command headquarters of the Philippine Army (PA) in Camp O’ Donnell in neighboring Capas, Tarlac.” he noted.
The Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang-Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala), UMA’s local affiliate in Tarlac, reported that while the APC’s arrived only last Sunday, the deployment of soldiers at the PPP solar project started last Nov. 26.
Earlier this year, more than a thousand farmers and residents had signed a petition to stop the TSPP. The petition was submitted to the DAR which, in 2013, had issued a Notice of Coverage (NOC) to certify that the area, which was then farmlands, was covered by the government’s land reform program.
“The NOC was practically useless as this did not prevent the Cojuangco- Aquino firm Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco) from using local police, private security guards and goons to violently eject farm worker beneficiaries (FWBs) who have been tilling the lands,” Echanis said.
