Lady farmer says rice was promised to hungry demostrators
“WE WERE promised bags of rice.”
These were the words of Leonora Taño, a farmer for 25 years in Barangay Binuongan, Arakan, North Cotabato, when asked by reporters why she joined the protesters blocking the Cotabato-Davao highway in Kidapawan City since Mar. 30.
Taño was teary eyed when she recounted how she couldn’t attend the moving-up ceremony of her Grade 7 and 8 kids in exchange for the promise of the bags of rice which never came.
“If I only knew that there’s going to be chaos, we wouldn’t have come here,” she told TIMES in visayan. “My husband was even wounded.”
Taño’s husband, also a farmer, is recuperating at the Midway Hospital for wounds sustained in the violent dispersal on Friday morning. And the bad news keeps on coming as she learned that her husband will have to undergo surgery, and she was prohibited allegedly by the organizers from leaving the United Methodist Church compound in Kidapawan.
On the other hand, Ariel Casilao, first nominee of Anakpawis, stressed that Taño was referring to her share of the demand of protesters for the government to give them 15,000 sacks of rice.
“The farmers shouldn’t have to demand in the first place,” said Casilao, adding that it’s the government’s responsibility when they declared the area in a state of calamity.
Taño admitted that after their community was declared under “state of calamity,” she received three kilos of rice from their barangay and another five kilos from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
But these were not enough for her family of six.
Meanwhile, Kidapawan City Mayor Joseph Evangelista said that his constituents have already received their rice subsidy from their barangay while the subsidy from the municipality is still on going.
The violent dispersal resulted to 116 injured, 18 are hospitalized, 89 missing including six minors, and two were tortures identified as Ondo Peonel and Leonora Paolenel, according to the Casilao.
But based on the records of Kidapawan LGU, 140 were injured and 99 of those are police personnel.
Evangelista also said that they temporarily detained 77 individuals after they were arrested during the dispersal. He added that they are going to file appropriate charges against these individuals.
On the side of the protesters, they claimed that five people were killed during the dispersal and the two bodies of two women are still missing. Casilao also insisted that the cause of death was from bullets.
Evangelista, however, said that there are only two bodies recovered and their causes of death are wounds from the rocks.
The city mayor also said that the police fired on the air as warning shot, but one of the cops was wounded by a gun from a .38 caliber, a gun not issued to the PNP. The slug is now in the custody of the Scene of the Crime Operatives.
He also revealed that one of the casualties tested positive for paraffin test on his right hand.
But both sides failed to present a medico legal or an autopsy report to support their claims.
Robin Padilla, Congressman Neri Colminares, representatives Terry Ridon and Isagani Zarate on Saturday went to different hospitals in Kidapawan to check the conditions of the wounded individuals.
Meanwhile, 94 individuals left the sanctuary of the United Methodist Church and went home.
Moreover, the people in the United Methodist Church as of Saturday afternoon received 400 sacks of rice from Robin Padilla, 200 sacks of rice from Senator Grace Poe, and 200 from the people of Davao City, Casilao said.
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