Farmers from various regions protested in front of the Department of National Defense (DND) headquarters at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City to condemn the continuing military operations in rural communities and demand an end to human rights violations committed in the course of the Marcos Jr. administration’s counterinsurgency campaign.
Farmers from Bicol, Southern Tagalog, Negros and Central Luzon led by the Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas, together with KARAPATAN, Katribu and BAYAN, called for the withdrawal of military troops from farming and indigenous communities and denounced the National Action Plan on Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD), which they described as a blueprint for intensified repression in the countryside.
With the call “Militar sa kanayunan, palayasin!” the protesters highlighted the continuing killings, threats, harassment and other human rights violations affecting farmers, indigenous peoples and rural communities.
“The continuing deployment of military troops in farming communities has brought not peace and development, as the Marcos Jr. administration claims under its NAP-UPD, but displacement and grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Farmers who struggle for land and livelihood are treated as enemies of the State, while entire communities are subjected to military operations under the guise of counterinsurgency,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay.
On the sixth month of the Negros 19 massacre, the farmers called for justice for the 19 individuals killed, several were farmers, in Toboso, Negros Occidental. They also said that the threats against individuals and communities continue, but the issues of landgrabbing and the dire situation of farmers continue.
In Bicol, farmers face aggressive development projects that threaten their livelihoods, like the wind energy projects in Camarines Sur, where they have been subjected to harassment, intimidation and restrictions on their rights to freedom of association and movement.
In Nueva Vizcaya, intrusive mining projects in Kasibu and Dupax del Norte threaten to displace farmers from the lands they till, while leaders and members of peasant organizations and environmental defenders face arbitrary arrests and trumped-up charges for asserting their rights and defending their communities.
In Southern Tagalog, communities and rights defenders are subject to heavy surveillance, in attempts to prevent farmers from exposing and calling out plunderous eco-tourism projects and the government’s National Greening Program which are used to drive away farmers from their lands, and more recently, the expansion of military facilities under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) like Palawan.
According to KARAPATAN, the Barangay Development Program of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), which is part of the NAP-UPD and which the Marcos Jr. administration touts as having alleviated poverty among farmers in rural areas, has been made as a gateway of opening the communities to more military threats, surveillance, justifying their presence in the communities in the guise of its so-called programs.
“The NAP-UPD perpetuates the same militarist approach that has resulted in killings, forced displacement and the repression of rural communities. Rather than addressing landlessness, poverty and the demands of farmers and indigenous peoples, the Marcos Jr. administration continues to rely on military force against communities asserting their rights,” Palabay said.
“We demand the pull-out of military troops in the countryside. As long as Marcos Jr. and his warmongers in the Armed Forces of the Philippines target farmers instead of addressing their demands for land, rights, and justice, they shall likewise continue to protest and dissent,” concluded Palabay.