Press Release
February 17, 2009

WHY WERE FARMERS VIOLENTLY DISPERSED
DURING PEACEFUL RALLY ON MENDIOLA?

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today assailed Malacañang for ordering law enforcers to violently disperse farmers who were peacefully rallying on Mendiola street instead of allowing them to air their legitimate grievances directly before President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Pimentel said some 500 landless farmers from Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, Leyte and Iloilo staged a protest rally on Mendiola, the gateway to the Palace, on Thursday to press for the enactment of a new law that will address the inadequacies of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and to ask for the redistribution of the Arroyo landholdings in Negros Occidental.

At about 8 p.m., he said the unarmed farmers were forcibly dispersed by anti-riot policemen. As the policemen advanced on them, the farmers lied down on their backs. But to make them flee, firemen trained water cannons on them.

"After hitting their hungry and aching bodies with powerful torrents of water, the anti-riot cops truncheoned their heads and smashed the feet and the legs of the men and women who lay prostrate and helpless on the ground," Pimentel said.

"Many of the farmers lost consciousness. Those who were able enough succored their fallen comrades. They were met with more violence by the anti-riot cops."

Pimentel said that after the demonstrators were doused by the powerful fire hoses, they were forcibly picked up by the police and some of them had their feet smashed by the iron shields of the police.

He sarcastically observed that the lawmen already applied the Magna Carta for Women - even before it is promulgated into law - as the policemen did not discriminate between men and women in the use of force. He said this was graphically shown in a photo taken of an old woman with bruises in her arms that she suffered after being beaten up in the dispersal melee.

The minority leader said the leaders of the brutalized farmers later issued a denunciatory statement in which they stated:

"The incident, reminiscent of the violent dispersal of protesters during the Marcos regime, has betrayed the utter bankruptcy - morally and politically - of the Arroyo regime. It can no longer afford to face the people and address their grievances. It can only respond cowardly with fascist violence because it no longer represents the interests and welfare of the people but of the big landowners and the plunderers of the nation's coffers and wealth."

On Friday (Feb. 13), Pimentel said wider sectors of society, including the religious, students, non-government organizations, labor and concerned laity expressed their solidarity by staging an indignation rally. But he said these demonstrators were likewise prevented from going to Mendiola to reach the gates of Malacañang.

He said the authorities can invent a reason why the farmers and their supporters are not allowed to air their peaceful grievances directly before the President or at least before the Palace of the People. He said the usual alibi is to prevent a disruption of vehicular traffic on the streets.

"Since when has the flow of traffic been placed at equal level with the right of the people to air their grievances before the authorities who hold power in this land?"

He said that maybe the occupants of Malacañang are scared of the very people they are sworn to serve.

Maybe, he said the President cannot stomach reading the message by a wizened landless farmer from Task Force Mapalad during the Mendiola rally as inscribed in a heart-shaped placard he was carrying. The message reads: "PGMA, don't kill your father's legacy. Extend CARP."

"That is a message that is also beamed to us, members of Congress. Extend CARP with compulsory land acquisition and distribution," he said.

Pimentel said that when he supported the extension of CARP (Republic Act 6657) on Dec. 17, 2008, it was on the assumption that what the lawmakers were doing - extending the funding of CARP up to June, 2009 - was better than seeing the law expire.

"Obviously, the landless farmer-tillers know the situation than us. They want an extension of CARP with powers for the Department of Agrarian Reform to acquire and distribute land compulsorily," he said.

"If we do not want social turmoil to afflict our land, as lawmakers, we have to respond to the just grievances of the landless tillers of the country, and not turn our backs on them or turn the police on them."

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