NDF-Southern Mindanao propaganda statement posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines Website (Apr 19): Oppose Lapanday-PNP collusion, install landless tillers in Tagum City now!
Rubi del Mundo, Spokesperson
NDFP Southern Mindanao
19 April 2017
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Southern Mindanao Region condemns the brazen complicity between the PNP and the landlord comprador Lorenzo-owned Lapanday Foods Inc. (LFC) to thwart the GRP’s own land reform own machinery and deprive peasants just ownership over their lands. The NDFP also challenges GRP Pres. Rodrigo Duterte to pave the way for the immediate occupation of the farmer-beneficiaries and make good on the promise of his peace panel to jointly sign the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-economic Reforms and distribute lands freely nationwide.
Not content in using terror and scare tactics when the Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries, Inc. (MARBAI) first occupied their lands last year, LFC has currently deployed around 700 company guards and conscripted paramilitary Lumad groups to fortify the banana plantation on April 18. The guards were clearly in combat mode, ready to violently foil peasants, their families and supporters who only have their ranks to protect them from any fierce dispersal.
Yesterday’s events clearly showed that landed gentries such as the Lorenzos can get away with shielding their greedy business interests by using the PNP to counteract the peasants’ militant action and undermine the GRP’s own Department of Agrarian Reform. Acting on the orders of LFC and with tacit approval from the duplicitous PNP Chief Ronaldo dela Rosa, PRO 11 Police Chief Superintendent Manuel Gaerlan bald-facedly defied the DAR order to disarm LFC’s company guards and ignored the DAR’s installation activity.
The PNP has been a consistent private mercenary of the LFC in countervailing the peasants’ struggle. Its personnel did nothing when armed guards of the Lorenzos indiscriminately fired at the peasants and severely wounding nine of them last December 13. The PNP stood idly by as the peasants were forcibly evicted from their own lands on December 31. Different farmers organizations and advocacy groups who came to support the peasants of MARBAI were blocked, interrogated, harassed—some were even forced to go back to their towns—by PNP and AFP troops around the region.
It would be a test of sincerity on the part of the Duterte regime who expressed willingness to sign a jointly-approved program on land reform and socio-economic reforms with the NDFP by exercising its political will to give lands to the long dispossessed peasants like MARBAI. It should not only empower DAR to implement land distribution in Southern Mindanao and but also elsewhere in the country. It should also punish despotic landlords like the Lorenzos who have long impoverished and made peasants and peasant workers heavily indebted due to onerous contracts such as Agri-Venture Agreements.
We hail the landless tillers of Madaum for waging a bold struggle against the perceived powerful landlord to smash the fetters of feudal exploitation perpetuated against them for decades. We, are likewise, calling on all revolutionary forces, allies and well-meaning GRP officials to stand with the peasants and mobilize all forms of support to defeat the fascist posturing of the Lorenzos and ensure a peaceful installation of the landless tillers.
The revolutionary government in Southern Mindanao warns the Lorenzos, their armed groups and the PNP to desist from exercising or abetting violence against the just demands of the landless tillers. The People’s Democratic Government is ready and able to defend the peasants in the event that the situation should result to anything other than their ownership of the land.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.