Harassment Targeting Luisita Peasant Leaders Intensifying
Published on July 3, 2010
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA—“Every peasant leader’s situation in Hacienda Luisita today is very critical,” said Federico Laza, member of AMBALA (Alliance of Hacienda Luisita Farmworkers). All peasant leaders are openly under surveillance and being followed everywhere in the hacienda by at least four military men armed with high-powered rifles. “The people in Luisita are being threatened to discontinue their struggle for land,” Laza told Bulatlat in Filipino. If they did not, he said quoting the military, “something will happen.”
The group AMBALA has joined farmers and farm workers from other parts of Luzon in camping out at the foot of Mendiola Bridge near Malacañang since June 30, President Aquino’s first day in office at Malacañang. The peasants are advancing some “immediate demands” such as genuine land reform and pull-out of state armed troops from farming communities.
In the case of Hacienda Luisita, farmers are asking the Supreme Court to lift the already four-year-old temporary restraining order it imposed on the Agriculture Department’s 2005 decision to revoke the 1989 stock distribution option (SDO) and thus finally place the Luisita lands under physical land reform coverage.
With his son Jesus killed in the Hacienda Luisita massacre in 2004, 69-year old Federico Laza has become more active in the campaign for actual land reform in the hacienda. It has resulted in his being under military surveillance too, as well as being subjected to harassment although he is not a leader of AMBALA.... MORE
Source: Bulatlat.com
URL: http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2010/07/03/harassment-targeting-luisita-peasant-leaders-intensifying/
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