Probe 2005 Hacienda Luisita massacre, ILO mission urged

Workers in Hacienda Luisita yesterday asked the visiting officials of the International Labor Organization (ILO) to also conduct an investigation into the massacre of their farmer colleagues by government security men inside the sprawling estate in Tarlac province nearly four years ago.

Saying justice has yet to be served to the victims, survivors and families of the slain agricultural laborers, the Unyon ng Mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) wrote Cleopatra Dumbia-Henry, senior adviser of the International Labor Standards of the ILO and also the head of the ILO high—level mission to the Philippines, and urged her and her team to look into the Nov. 16, 2005 labor-related incident, where seven farm hands of the estate were killed when military and police opened fire on protesting workers inside the hacienda.

In its letter dated Sept. 18, 2009, UMA told Dumbia-Henry that “closure” has yet to be achieved in the case as the government has played deaf to the victims’ families’ clamor for it to conduct an honest-to-goodness investigation into the incident, allowing for those responsible for the farmers’ deaths to go unpunished.

UMA also raised with the ILO official the current standing of the agrarian disputes in Hacienda Luisita. It said the Supreme Court has yet to lift the temporary restraining order it issued in 2006, preventing the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council to distribute the land to agrarian reform beneficiaries and farm workers in the sugar-milling estate.

The group at the same time told Dumbia-Henry about the Oct. 30, 2009 memo issued by the management of the hacienda, ordering all farm workers to stop cultivating portions of the disputed lands inside the huge property.

“We urge the ILO to send a representative to further investigate the massacre in Hacienda Luisita, and other state-sponsored terrorism committed in the aftermath of the massacre, but directly connected to the struggle and plight of Hacienda workers,” UMA information officer Jay Calaguing said.

Calaguing recalled the 2005 massacre, where he said seven farm workers were killed, 72 were injured and 111 were illegally arrested by the military and the police.

He moreover claimed that the “state sanctioned violence” against Hacienda Luisita farm workers and supporters continued with the brutal murder of Ric Ramos, president of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (ULWU), and Tirso Cruz, board director of the United Luisita Workers Union in 2006.

Calaguing also cited the case of Rene Galang, both president of UMA and ULWU, who was accused by the military of being the leading cadre of the local communist rebel group and its armed wing, the New People’s Army. He said Galang’s house was raided by the military in search for him.

“Our president was forced to leave his house inside the Hacienda Luisita sugar estate because of serious threats to his life,” Calaguing said.

UMA said the 6,453-hectare sugar estate owned by the family of the late former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino is currently saturated by military soldiers who were deployed by the Northern Luzon Command and the Armed Forces headquarters in Manila to monitor the movements of union leaders and members inside the hacienda.

In February last year, UMA said the family of Aquino veritably allowed the military to convert Hacienda Luisita into a military garrison.

It said troops from the Army’s 71st, 48th and 69th Infantry Battalions were deployed in all villages, and 20 members of paramilitary groups were stationed in each barrio inside the hacienda.

UMA said the troops were pulled out in September last year, but it does not mean they will not be redeployed to the hacienda as the military has tagged the estate as a “breeding ground” for communist guerrillas.

According to UMA, at present, the farm workers have planted rice and other crops on 2,000 hectares of Hacienda Luisita. This, it said, has benefited more than 1,800 farm workers and their families. –Charlie V. Manalo, Daily Tribune