[asia-apec 806] US-Estrada-Cojuangco trio grabs land, food and water from people

[GABRIELA]

From: kmp at info.com.ph

NEWS RELEASE
16 October 1998

World Food Day protests

MANILA -- KMP (Philippine Peasant Movement) and Pamalakaya (National
Federation of Fisherfolk Organizations) today, which is marked by the
United Nations as World Food Day, slammed the Estrada government and the
real powers behind his throne for the most systematic looting of the
country's land, water and food supply by local landlord-compradors and
foreign monopoly capitalists.

Aeta elders paraded in front of the Department of Agriculture pushing a
cart filled with diseased pork, chemical-ridden vegetables and imported
rice discards lampooning "Erap's Rolling Store," in a symbolic protest
against Estrada's anti-poor food polices.

Rafael Mariano, KMP chairman, noted that the country's food problem started
26 years ago when Marcos decreed a law limiting the scope of agricultural
land devoted to rice and corn, thus hampering land distribution to the real
beneficiaries of land reform, the farmers. 

Mariano said that bogus agrarian reform schemes since the 1970s changed
only in the magnitude of control, domination and demands of the
international market for high value crops which displaced traditional food
crops. President Estrada's privatization of the National Food Authority
(NFA) and the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) removed the last
guarantees for small farmers to raise their own foodcrops. KMP declares
today's World Food Day as World Landless, Foodless and Waterless Day. 

KMP said the Estrada government is obviously attempting to establish for
itself a historical distinction by harping on an ambitious modernization of
agriculture and fisheries. But because Estrada continues to avoid
redistribution of land, as exemplified by the deceptive stock distribution
by his political patron Danding Cojuanco, the government's sham land reform
program will further fail in assuring self-sufficiency in food and instead
succeed in the commercial overproduction of exotic crops. 

The peasant movement repeated its prognosis that Erap has harbored an
anti-poor and repressive agenda against the peasants and fisherfolk from
day one of his administration. Mariano said that political repression and
violence courtesy of the AFP, the Philippine National Police and the hired
goons of landlords/warlords like Eduardo Cojuangco, Fil-Estate and the
Aranetas, were unleashed against peasants who were simply defending their
right to land.

In related developments, the Central Luzon Aeta Association (CLAA) and AMGL
(Alliance of Farmers from Central Luzon) today marched to the government
offices of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to protest
the Mining Act and to push for the genuine protection of their ancestral
domains in Zambales and Pampanga. They accused the commission of conniving
with transnational mining corporations and big real estate developers in
viciously evicting both lowland and upland dwellers from their farms.
 
KMP said that this is part of the trend in which major food basket areas
are being converted and destroyed to facilate export crop production or
development of real estate empires like that of House Speaker Manuel Villar.
 
Rodolfo Sambajon, Pamalakaya national chair, said our fishery resources are
served on silver platters to foreign and domestic fishing monopolies. He
added that Estrada's blanket endorsement of RA 8550 or the Fisheries Law of
1998, and RA 8435 or the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA)
exposed any pretension by the Estrada government that it has the interest
of the masses in mind. "These laws glorify corporate takeover of our marine
and aquatic resources. Is this the kind of food sufficiency program that
the Hollywood-style president wants us to cherish and crave for?" Sambajon
asked.
 
The two militant organizations, KMP and Pamalakaya, will launch massive
peasant protests this month. It will be a week-long rural folk protest from
October 17-23 at the DAR national office by farmers, fisherfolk and tribal
people from Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog. Highlight is the big
October 21 march-rally to Mendiola, where the massacre of peasants happened
when the marines fired at a peasant-led rally in January 1997.#

Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas
(KMP - Peasant Movement of the Philippines)