BOTH the protesters and government officials are liable for the violent dispersal of protesting farmers in Kidapawan City in North Cotabato that took the lives of two farmers, the Commission on Human Rights said Wednesday.
Two policemen were seriously hurt and scores of farmers and policemen were injured during the dispersal of about 6,000 farmers.
The farmers had blocked the national highway to demand rice from the government following a drought that hit their farms.
In a 46-page report, the commission said the farmers’ protest action took place when the government ignored the farmers’ demand, which was aggravated by the failure of North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza to provide them with food relief.
“Access to rice by the farmers-protesters was not timely addressed. Neither was a gradual nor prompt, much less sustainable, response from the government felt by the farmers-protesters,” the report says.
“The State, as duty-bearer, failed to address the hunger problem of the farmers-protesters and their families.”
The Commission also noted the “deceit by the organizers and ‘unknown persons’ who went to various areas to persuade people to join the protest,” and that the “instrumentalization” of the poor must stop.
“People cannot be viewed as mere tools for the promotion of an agenda, propaganda or for a campaign. Their free consent, based upon full information of all the purposes as well as manner of the proposed action, must at all times be obtained,” the report says.
Despite the lack of a rally permit, the Kidapawan farmers were merely “acting to avoid an evil or injury to themselves” as they were suffering from hunger.
“Though it can be argued that the farmers-protesters’ assembly blocked the highway and, in effect, curtailed the use of the same by the public, the protesting farmers were hungry—their families were in danger of suffering illnesses and even death from starvation.”
On April 1, the farmers blocked the national highway to demand government assistance. But instead of helping the 6,000 farmers, the police stormed their barricade and opened fire, killing two farmers and wounding others.
A fatality, Rotello Daelto of Arakan town, raised his hands but an unidentified policeman fired at him, hitting him in the neck.
“At their current state, it can be said that the farmers-protesters, as rights-holders, were acting to avoid an evil or injury to themselves and their families and the protest action was their desperate move to call on government to immediately fulfill its obligation to provide assistance in the time of calamity,” the commission said.
Based on its probe, it was the police officers who started the violence that prodded the farmers to throw rocks at them.
“It is clear that the violence erupted after the PNP called for the dispersal of the farmers-protesters. It was the dispersal with the use of water cannons initiated by the police that agitated the young men from the group of farmers-protesters to start throwing stones and wood planks at the police,” the commission said.