MULTIPLIERS. The forces of anti-riot police in the barricade in Kidapawan City include plainclothes men. This photo was taken a day before the violent dispersal took place today, April 1, 2016. (Earl O. Condeza/davaotoday.com)
DAVAO CITY— Bayan Muna Partylist Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said the dispersal of the farmers in Kidapawan City resonates the 1987 Mendiola Massacre because of the police’s use of their firearms to disperse protesters.
Initial reports showed that 30 farmers were wounded or injured, eight of them were hit by bullets, 22 from stones thrown and one was confirmed killed during the dispersal.
“This marks another bloody page our country’s failed democracy. This is resonant of Mendiola Massacre and Hacienda Luisita Massacre, both of which happened under the respective presidencies of the Aquinos. True to form, the haciendero Aquino administrations of the past and the present are accumulating grievous sins against the peasantry,” Zarate said.
Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said the blame “must not only focus on Governor. Emmylou “Lala” Taliño-Mendoza”. “It is not impossible because the President is landlord.”
“President Aquino must also be blamed here but that is the problem. The president is a landlord that is why he doesn’t have a heart to the farmers,” Colmenares said.
He said the government has P1.3 trillion budget allotted for the farmers so why is it impossible to answer the calls of the farmers.
“The haciendero regime of Aquino must end, along with the bloodied, corrupt, anti-peasant, anti-people Daang Matuwid,” Zarate said.
“They always say that they are pro-farmers and they will help them but instead of giving them rice and food they shoot them. What kind of Government is this? They give answer to the calamity by a much bloody calamity,” Colmenares said.
Zarate said the drought-stricken areas of Cotabato province should be addressed immediately by the local and but also by the national governments.
“We demand justice for this brutality against our hapless farmers; we demand that the grievances of these peasants impacted by El Niño be addressed soonest, not with bullets, but, with justice,” Zarate said.
Zarate added “The principle of social justice demands that this crisis is resolved the soonest. Hunger knows no politics and it should be addressed in a humanitarian manner not by brute force or violence.”
Vice presidential candidate Alan Peter Cayetano said that the they will investigate the Kidapawan dispersal in the Senate. (davaotoday.com)
