Shameful indifference

ON DISTANT SHORE

By Val G. Abelgas

Why is it that every time farmers take to the streets to air their legitimate grievances, they are met with violence in the hands of the government that professes to exist to serve them? Why is that when the poor protests, they are met with bullets and batons, instead of compassion and understanding?

We ask these in the wake of the violent dispersal last Friday of 6,000 hungry farmers who gathered on a highway in Kidapawan City in North Cotabato to demand 15,000 sacks of rice for as many families who have been suffering from hunger because of the drought. They were hoping to stir the government to action. Instead, they met a violent reaction.

Instead of listening to their problems, hundreds of policemen, on orders of the mayor and the tacit approval of the governor and perhaps of higher officials in Manila, bombarded them with water cannons and shot them with M-16 rifles. In the aftermath of the brutal dispersal, three farmers lay dead, 53 were injured and 60 more protesters were missing.

For three days, the farmers stood on the highway fronting the National Food Authority warehouse, where thousands of sacks were probably lying idle, hoping that the government would take compassion and give them the one sack of rice per family that they were asking to tide them over while their elected officials busied themselves campaigning for reelection on the same old promise of helping and uplifting the poor.

The farmers were simply demanding that the provincial government fulfill its promise to assist them during the drought. They were simply asking that the officials they helped elect would take pity on them and their families while they await government action on the extended drought that has prevented them from growing rice and other crops.

But compassion obviously is lacking in most of our wealthy officials. Neither is tolerance in their vocabulary. It was almost certain the protest would be met with brutality in the same deadly manner the government reacted to the legitimate protests by peasants and farmers who marched on Mendiola street in Manila on Jan. 22, 1987 to demand that President Cory Aquino fulfill her campaign promise to implement agrarian reform and distribute farmlands to farmers.

Twelve marchers were killed, 39 other protesters suffered from gunshot wounds, and 12 others sustained minor injuries. They were first blasted with water cannon and then met with a hail of bullets.

Or as brutal as the way policemen and soldiers dispersed the rally of thousands of farmers in Hacienda Luisita – yes, the sugar lands owned by the Aquino-Cojuangco families in Tarlac – on Nov. 16, 2004. The farmers were demanding that the farmlands be distributed to them as required by the Agrarian Reform Law.

When the smoke settled, seven farm workers lay dead on the land they had tilled for decades, 121 were injured (32 had gunshot wounds), including 11 children and four elderly men. In the succeeding weeks, eight supporters of the strike were killed: Bishop Alberto Ramento, former supreme bishop of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente; Fr. William Tadena, also of the IFI; Tarlac City councilor Abel Ladera; Ric Ramos, president of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union; and four worker-community leaders. These murders have not been satisfactorily resolved to this day.

“It is vile enough that this administration has failed to support the farmers and lumad of Kidapawan during the prolonged drought in Mindanao. But it is downright inhuman for them to shoot at the same people begging for help,” Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago said of the latest act of oligarch brutality.
“In the first place, there would not have been a protest if only these people felt compassion from their leaders. This government cannot claim to be pro-poor when it answers pleas for help with bursts of gunshot,” the senator added.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, through his spokesman, also assailed the violent dispersal of the hungry farmers. “They asked for rice, but they got bullets,” said spokesman Rico Quicho. “Hunger is a reality that must be addressed not by violence but by compassion and concrete programs to improve the lives of the poor.”

Senator Francis Escudero said every citizen has a right to free assembly, and that the concerns of the farmers were legitimate. “The least the government could do is listen to their concerns and do something about it,” he said.

The Promotion of Church People’s Response, on the other hand, expressed “utter contempt for hardhearted leaders who answered the people’s cry for food with death-dealing bullets and stone-hard blows.”

“When the hunger of the poor brings violent responses from those in leadership, these leaders are not fit to govern,” said Marie Sol Villalon, PCPR co-chairperson. “Our government is plagued with shameful indifference.”

Amid the maelstrom, President Aquino kept silent.

The Kilusang Magbubukidng Pilipinas (KMP) said Aquino’s silence on the violent dispersal of the farmers was reflective of his “habitual practice” as a “landlord president” of dismissing farmers’ demands.

“Aquino’s continuing silence and the lines mouthed by his numerous mouthpieces betray the President’s official position both on the issue of drought and the Kidapawan massacre. Aquino’s deafening silence shows that he is used to violent dispersals and massacres as a habitual practice of the landlord president in dismissing farmers’ just, legitimate, and moral demands,” KMP chair Rafael Mariano said.

What can you expect from an administration that didn’t show any compassion for the 44 elite policemen killed in the Mamasapano massacre, or for the thousands of victims of super typhoon Yolanda in Tacloban, or for the millions of SSS pensioners who were seeking a P2,000 increase in their monthly pensions to give them relief from the scourge of inflation?

As one militant said: “Our government is plagued with shameful indifference.”(valabelgas@aol.com)