Cops open fire at peasant barricade, 3 dead, 40 wounded

By CONG B. CORRALES,
Associate Editor

INSTEAD OF distributing the 15,000 sacks of rice as calamity assistance to the hundreds of peasants barricading in a portion of the Davao-Cotabato highway in Kidapawan City on Wednesday, police opened fire at the peasants leaving three peasants dead and 40+ others wounded.

Here in Cagayan de Oro, Vennel Chenfoo, Kabataan Partylist 3rd nominee condemned the violent dispersal.

“Hugot namong ginakondena ang pag open fire ng pulis sa mga mag-uuma nga nag barikada sa Cotabato highway,” Chenfoo’s text message reads.

Chenfoo said that the farmers only want immediate government action on the widespread hunger in their communities due to heavy crop losses because of the drought for five months now, “but the state answered with bullets.”

In Iligan City. at least 30 students staged an indignation rally yesterday to decry the violent dispersal of the peasant barricade at the Kidapawan National Highway in North Cotabato earlier.

The protest action spearheaded by Kabataan Partylist and the chapter of the League of Filipino Students in Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology calls for justice Kristine Cabardo, LFS regional spokesperson said that the “Tuwid na Daan rhetoric of the Aquino government actually means neglect and murder of the Filipino peasantry.”

“The Aquino government should be held accountable to the ‘massacre’ of these hungry farmers,” said Cabardo, pointing that “their only weapons were placards and streamers bearing appeals to the government to give them rice to feed their families.”

On Wednesday, hundreds of peasants suffering from the long drought and members of militant groups barricaded the highway to demand, among others, the release of 15,000 sacks of rice as calamity assistance.

In a report on Wednesday, MindaNews quoted Senior Supt. Alexander Tagum, provincial police director, as saying he has ordered his men to observe maximum tolerance.

“We are here to maintain the rule of law. We will not use force,” MindaNews quoted Tagum as saying.

Tagum also told MindaNews that the city crisis management committee told him that if the protesters use violence “we have the go-signal to use the firetrucks”to spray water at the protesters.”

Thousands of farmers since Wednesday blocked stretches of the Cotabato-Davao Highway in Kidapawan City to demand relief and subsidy for farm communities affected by the dry spell while some of them are picketing at the entrance to the provincial office of the National Food Authority.

Hundreds of commuters on jeepneys, buses and private vehicles have been stranded since Wednesday morning because of the blockade.

The farmers came all the way from the drought-affected towns of Magpet, President Roxas, Antipas, Arakan, Magpet and Makilala.