“Impunity is at its peak in the Aquino administration’s remaining days, leaving a horrible legacy of killing human rights defenders while babysitting criminals.”

These were the words of Ernan Baldomero, vice-chairperson of rights group Hustisya, as they condemned two consecutive killings on August 18 and 19, in the provinces of North Cotabato and Sorsogon.

In the morning of August 18, Joel Gulmatico, 58, and chair of the Arakan Peasant Progressive Organization (APPO), was shot dead while driving a motorcycle on his way to Barangay Naje in Arakan, North Cotabato. Gulmatico was a former member of the barangay (village) council in the said barangay for three terms. He ran for village chair in 2013 but lost.

According to rights groups, Gulmatico was an opponent to the presence of the Peace and Development Program (PDOP) in Barangay Naje. The PDOP is part of the AFP’s Oplan Bayanihan.

“Not another one in Arakan! We demand justice for Gulmatico, as well as for Fr. Fausto Tentorio and farmer Ramon Batoy.  Justice remains elusive, and the people in Arakan have all the reasons to demand the pull-out of troops in their communitiees. Who else has the motive to silence the likes of Gulmatico?” said Baldomero.

On October 2011, Italian missionary Tentorio was killed by alleged members of the paramilitary group Bagani. Three days after his murder, Batoy was killed when soldiers belonging to the 57th Infantry Battalion attacked their community in an alleged raid to arrest the priest’s killers.

“As it turned out, it is the military that is coddling the perpetrators. By allowing the existence of paramilitary groups, Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan continues to sow fear in the communities, despite the use of terms such as ‘peace and development.’ They continue the same policy of repression as implemented by previous governments. We join the call to dismantle paramilitary groups and to pull out military troops in communities,” Baldomero added.

Hustisya also expressed indignation with the killing of Teodoro “Todoy” Escanilla, spokesperson of a provincial chapter of Karapatan in Sorsogon, who was killed inside his house on the midnight of August 19.

“We are indignant at Ka Todoy’s murder, at a time when plunderers and human rights violators like Juan Ponce Enrile and Jovito Palparan are pampered by the Aquino government to the core. The killings of Gulmatico and Escanilla deserve justice,” said Baldomero.

Karapatan has documented 262 victims of extrajudicial killings since Aquino assumed office.

Reference:
Ernan Baldomero
Hustisya Vice Chairperson
+63939-2315464

Hustisya National Office
2/F #1 Maaralin cor. Matatag Streets
Central District, Diliman
Quezon City 1100 Philippines
Telephone: (02) 434-7486 | (02) 435-4146
Mobile: 0908-4383826
E-mail: hustisya.national@gmail.com

Every year, “Tiempo Muerto” or Dead Season continues to inflict economic hardships on the lives of the sugar workers in Negros. This annual phenomenon of hunger and dislocation has been a curse to the sugar workers’ family since Spanish period. It lasted for 3 to 4 months every year and its severity peaks in the month of August to September.

Hunger is the twin image of Tiempo Muerto. It is a period in a year wherein the sugar workers’ family endures the effect of a situation where they have no income as a result of the absence of any jobs in most haciendas. Budgeted work in few haciendas only earns sugar worker an income ranging from P200 to P300 pesos every week. It redounds only to P1.59 to P2.38 per meal budget of a sugar workers’ family with 6 members. Other Haciendas have no work at all.

Tiempo Muerto is firmly tied up to land monopoly. Land monopoly in the sugar producing regions has not been eliminated by land reform program of the government called CARP/CARPER after more than 28 years after of implementation since 1988 under Cory Aquino presidency. This government land reform program clearly failed in its supposed purpose in freeing the sugarcane workers from the clutches of poverty and hunger.

If the government’s land reform program failed, so are the Sugar Development Act and its main feature, the Block Farm program that, according to this act, will help mainly our agrarian reform beneficiaries. How this program could help our ARBs where, in fact, more than 80% of their land were already in the hands of big hacienderos and ariendadores.

Nowhere in the provisions of the Sugar Development Act that will solve the problems of the sugar workers including perennial low wages, job insecurity and violations of many employers in labor standards law implementation and in Social Security System law. The main backbone of the sugar industry, the sugar workers, has no place to get well within this Act.

Sugar Development Act cannot get rid of Tiempo Muerto, and therefore, cannot get rid of hunger of the sugar workers.

The irony is that Tiempo Muerto is a heartbreaking reality even our so called sugar leaders, government officials and government agencies, accepted as fact but did nothing seriously to root out its cause thru genuine and pro-workers economic plans and programs.

Every Local Government Units have millions of Peso in its 20% Development Fund and Calamity Fund every year. The Department of Labor and Employment have millions of Peso from the SAB Socio Economic Fund and several millions fron unreleased and unclaimed Social Amelioration Bunos Fund. Where does it go?

Tiempo Muerto is a political calamity that struck every sugar worker in various forms and degrees of extremity. It is an annual calamity to the families of 780,000 sugar workers who depends their lives to the industry that no amount of Marching for Peace brouhaha of the Philippine Army and the provincial government can put it out of sight.

Worst is, the NFA warehouses in Negros was full of rice stocks that started to rot while hundreds of thousands of our hacienda workers in the rural areas suffers in food shortage. Where will be these huge stocks of rice prepared for?

Are these stocks is for the election campaign of our honorable politicians to augment their campaign logistics to perpetuate their hold to government positions? Why they cannot release these stocks during dead season to help our starving sugar workers and their family in many haciendas?

If the government bureaucracy is serious enough to stop Tiempos Muertos, they should pass the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill to break land monopoly and introduce comprehensive and inclusive economic program that includes the welfare of the sugar workers.

We call on the Governor of this province, Local Government Units and other concern agencies to release food assistance to the Sugar Workers!

Reference:
JOHN M. LOZANDE
Secretary General
National Federation of Sugar Workers
MP No. +639072522233

MEDIA ADVISORY

National Federation of Sugar Workers
Bacolod City
August 18, 2015

The National Federation of Sugar Workers will conduct a 2-days protest activity on august 19 to 20, 2015 demanding government instrumentalities for Tiempo Muerto related assistance and policy advocacies to the sugar workers.

This activity will address its demands to the Department of Agrarian Reform Provincial Office, the Social Security System Office, Department of Labor and Employment, National Food Authority and to the Provincial Government.

The activity will be participated by more than 1,000 farm workers from different Haciendas.

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Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura
Federation of Agricultural Workers | Philippines
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The Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) together with its sub-region in Northern–Mindanao  condemned the illegal arrest and detention of its former volunteer teacher Daniel Lampusay, 22 years old, and his brother Ejun aged 18 years old last August 3, 2015 at Sitio Kibungkol, Brgy. Hindangan, Gingoog city, province of Misamis Oriental.

The recent  human rights abuses is part of the continuing attacks on the  Lumads  and  the  RMP initiated alternative learning schools in Northern Mindanao, Southern  Mindanao , Socsargen  and Caraga regions. These schools have  been tagged by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as  communist-led schools on which they often harassed the teachers and students  their continuous military operations.

“We denounce the gross violation of   the basic rights of Lampusay brothers by the elements
of  the 58th Infantry Battalion. This is another desperate measure of the military to threaten the Lumad community in the area,” Sr. Francis Añover, RMP, National Coordinator said in a statement.

“It is lamentable that the military accuses them as members of the New Peoples’ Army when they are deeply impoverished as farm workers in a  coconut grove in the same sitio. We, as missionaries know the plight of the rural poor and their aspiration only is the upliftment of their family from poverty and starvation”, Añover added.

RMP – NMR reported that they were first held at a local daycare center of the said barangay where the military forces used as their detachment, transferred to  Medina town police station and finally detained at present in  the  Misamis Oriental Provincial Jail. The elder Lampusay is a former volunteer teacher of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines – Northern Mindanao Region (RMP – NMR) under our  Literacy -Numeracy program. He and his brother are Higaonon residents of Sitio Minalwang in Barangay Bal-ason, Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental.

“We demand their immediate and unconditional release, as   our Holy  Father  Pope Francis opposed inequality  as stated  in  his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel).  We hope  the military heed the Holy Father’s  call  to touch  their hearts  and  empathize  the rural poor  indigenous  people’s  plight ,” Añover called.

Reference:
Sr. Francis Añover, RSM
National Coordinator, RMP
Tel. No. +63 2 961-5094