THE women’s group Gabriela on Thursday demanded the suspension or removal from office of Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Mendoza, a Liberal Party member and close ally of President Benigno Aquino III, for having ordered the dispersal of protesting farmers in Kidapawan last April 1.
“The Department of Interior and Local Government should immediately order her suspension if not her removal from office,” Gabriela Rep. Emmi De Jesus said, adding that Mendoza should also be charged for her criminal neglect of farmers’ demands for calamity aid and subsidies amid a long drawn drought.
De Jesus faulted Mendoza for the violent dispersal of the barricade set up by the drought-hit 6,000 farmers that resulted in the death of two protesters and wounding of a hundred others when the police opened fire at the barricade.
De Jesus made the demand following the admission of relieved Cotabato police chief Alexander Tagum during a Senate hearing on Wednesday that the order to disperse the protest came no less from the governor herself.
“Mendoza’s continued stay in officer is a big insult and injustice to the farmers whom she had left to starve and authorities harassed,” De Jesus said.
The Gabriela solon further said there can be no excuse for the violence inflicted on the protesting farmers who have been denied of calamity aid due them and that all investigations being conducted must lead towards giving farmers justice.
“The finger-pointing and buck-passing during the Senate hearing should not end in a whitewash. The people must stay vigilant and ensure that investigations are not meant to give those accountable the venue to wash the blood off their hands,” De Jesus said.
Jerome Aba of Suara Bangsamoro and Arlene Amar, survivors of the Kidapawan carnage, joined sugar workers led by Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura in demanding justice, genuine land reform and food aid amid tiempo muerto (dead time) and El Niño.
The survivors and sugar workers launched the “Tiempo Muerto” campaign against hunger and poverty in a media forum in Quezon City Thursday.
Tiempo muerto, or dead time, refers to the annual crisis period when the sugar industry temporarily grinds to a halt and farmworkers are left without any stable source of income.
According to the National Federation of Sugar Workers, UMA’s local affiliate in Negros Island, the public is largely unaware of the plight of the thousands of farmworkers during this dead season and the hunger and poverty experienced by around five million of their dependents.
Tiempo Muerto also refers to a media monitoring project launched by UMA in Bacolod City last March, which aims to gather and evaluate the quality of mainstream media reports on poverty and hunger during this crisis period.
Tiempo Muerto hopes to spur positive change in media practices and the public’s understanding and appreciation of sugar workers’ plight during this crisis period, which is now aggravated by drought caused by El Nino.
The project is supported by the Canada-based World Association for Christian Communication.
UMA secretary general Danilo Ramos acknowledged the role of media people who are diligently covering recent events in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato, where drought-stricken farmers demanding food aid were violently dispersed by police last April 1.
Ramos said UMA joins the call of peasants across the country who are now clamoring for food, land and justice.
“Without our fearless media practitioners who gathered firsthand information, actual footage and photos of the Kidapawan massacre, the public would not have known of this tragedy.
“The farmers’ call, Bigas, Hindi Bala (Rice, Not Bullets), would be muted by the usual barrage of so-called ‘official information’ from the government’s communications offices,” Ramos said.
“The Tiempo Muerto project is a challenge to our friends in the media to cover the issues and uncover important matters hounding the sugar industry and its productive forces. The media can help sugar workers illuminate the public; we must all draw inspiration from the toiling masses’ struggle for genuine land reform, food security and true economic development,” he said.
“UMA likewise aims to shake this haciendero regime and its cabal of yellow spin doctors and trolls lurking in corporate and social media, the source of lies, misinformation and dirty tricks to boost the campaign of Liberal Party presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II, who hails from a family of sugar barons in Western Visayas,” Ramos said.
“Roxas has consistently pushed his family’s landlord interests in national politics,” he said.
“Kidapawan should not be another Escalante, Mendiola or Luisita. The farmers who produce food for our people demand genuine land reform and justice,” Ramos stressed.
