Peoples’ Coalition on Food Sovereignty

Solidarity Statement with the Farming Families of Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus:

For Land, Life and Justice
June 28th, 2011

The Peoples’ Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) - a growing international network of grassroots groups of small food producers and their allies - expresses staunch solidarity with the families of subsistence farmers living in Maramag, Bukidnon, who are facing forcible eviction from the lands they rely upon for their livelihoods due to the plans of the Davao Ventures Corporation (DAVCO) for plantations of pineapples and bananas, hen houses and hog farming.

In particular, PCFS notes the courageous stance of the members of the Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus (BTL) Association and BTL Women’s Association to defend the 400 hectares of land they have collectively cultivated for over three decades, growing rice and garden vegetables. PCFS commends their determination to continue to till the lands with their families, and to demand respect for their livelihood and basic human rights through protest pickets - despite brutal harassment by security guards hired by the Central Mindanao University (CMU) and members of the paramilitary Civilian Auxiliary Geographical Forces Unit (CAFGU).

PCFS condemns the use of armed security and CAFGU forces to intimidate and harm members of the BTL communities, including the reported incidences of gun shots being aimed at farmers, the harassment of peasant advocates, and the destruction of farm tools. The perpetrators - including individuals in the CMU administration providing direction to the eviction orders - must be held accountable for the grave violations of the farmers’ rights to life, security of person and civil as well as political freedoms, and be duly prosecuted. The national Government of the Philippines has a responsibility to intervene immediately and ensure that the harassment does not continue. Furthermore, since the farming families are the rightful beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) administered under the Cory Aquino Government, their rights as a community to till the land should be upheld.

The struggles of the BTL families for land justice and livelihood rights are a testament to the urgent need for national genuine agrarian reform, in which land must be redistributed to be in the hands of the tillers themselves, and serve the basic needs of all Filipinos. Displacing small food producers for developments of large-scale plantations for fruit exports on CMU lands will not contribute to food security. Instead, profits will be directed towards corporations, and will provide neither food security nor significant incomes to local communities. Meanwhile, the trend of evicting subsistence farmers to hand over land to corporate growers - which PCFS notes is in fact becoming increasingly normalized throughout the country - contributes to an unsustainable pattern of reliance on food imports, ecologically destructive mono-cropping farming that uses heavy inputs of chemical fertilizers, intensive water-use, and dispossession of local people. Greater hunger, dire poverty, desperation and intensified conflicts over land use are all inevitable consequences of this situation.

PCFS asserts that CMU and the Aquino Administration must heed the demands of all affected families of the BTL communities, and take urgent, immediate remedial action to respect their rights, upholding principles of social, economic, political, environmental, gender and land justice. Finally, PCFS supports the demands of the BTL communities for the withdrawal of armed security from the vicinity; for expedited proceedings to address the human rights violations committed against them; for dealings with DAVCO to be re-assessed; and for the disputed land to be committed to the tillers who rely upon it for the basis of their very survival. ###

Farmers want Mindanao university president out

Statement condemning the human rights violations committed by the security personnel hired by the Central Mindanao University against the farmers of Maramag, Bukidnon protesting against forcible relocation and supporting the farmers’ struggle for land and justice!

International Women's Alliance
June 23, 2011
The International Women’s Alliance condemns the human rights violations committed by 15 security personnel hired by the Central Mindanao University against the farmers of Maramag, Bukidnon who peacefully set up protest camps in front of the university to protest against the plan to illegally and forcibly displace thousands families from their homes and sources of livelihood.

The indiscriminate firing, beating, harsh dismantling of the protest camps and other brutal acts done to intimidate the protesters and which left six people, including two women, wounded, are violations of the basic human rights, including the right to life, property and to freedom of speech and to protest. We demand that immediate justice be served to the victims: hold the security guards, their security agency and the CMU administration accountable and compensate the wounded. We also demand that the harassment and intimidation against the farmers immediately stop and that the Philippine government put an end to the culture of impunity that reigns not only in Bukidnon but in all parts of the country.

We call on the Aquino administration to immediately resolve the land problem in Bukidnon and other parts of the Philippines and give the farmers the right and freedom to the land they till. We likewise call for the review of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, which has been proven to be one of biggest roadblock in the equitable distribution of agricultural land in the country. The continued and worsening landlessness and poverty of the women and men in the rural areas attest to the inability of the CARP to deliver social justice despite its more than 20 years of implementation.
Lastly, the International Women’s Alliance commends the perseverance of the Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus (BTL) and the BTL Women’s Association in continuing the fight for the farmers’ rights and welfare in Bukidnon, despite the numerous threats and other barriers thrown their way by the Central University of Mindanao and the Philippine government’s blatant disregard of the plight of the farmers. We give our full support to this decades-old struggle for land and pledge to be with the women and men of Maramag, Bukidnon in every step of the way towards the attainment of social justice.

Solidarity Message of Front Line to BTL women and men, and Amihan Northern Mindanao

Greetings from Front Line – the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Dublin.

We want to express our solidarity with the human rights defenders of the BLT women's organisation, BLT farmer's organisation, and AMIHAN that, for decades, have been protesting against forced eviction by Central Mindanao University
Human rights defender is a universally recognised concept which refers to individuals working peacefully to promote and protect rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, most people who are gathering here today are human rights defenders.

The recent attack on the peaceful protesters affiliated with BLT women's organisation and BLT farmer's organisation which resulted in the injuries of five human rights defenders is a serious matter that needs to be thoroughly addressed by the Philippines government.

The UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which is a document outlining the right to defend human rights, was passed in 1998 by the UN General Assembly. The Philippines government is a member of the assembly. This, therefore, means that the Philippines government agrees to abide by the Declaration which highlights that for “the purpose of promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, everyone has the right [to] meet and assembly peacefully”.

Therefore, we call on the authorities in the Philippines to carry out immediate, thorough and impartial investigation into the violent dispersal of the protest staged by BTL and the use of force by the private guards employed by the Central Mindanao University and to bring those responsible in justice.

Front Line will continue to support the peaceful struggle of BLT human rights defenders and continue to monitor the development closely.

In solidarity.

Mary Lawlor

Director
Front Line – the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Dublin, Ireland

ARWC in solidarity with the women and men peasants of the BTL Farmers' Association!
Defend Agrarian Rights, Uphold Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms!

22 June 2011

The Asian Rural Women’s Coalition extends its strong support and solidarity to the collective struggle of the Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus (BTL) Farmers Association in Bukidnon, Southern Philippines.

Around 800 rice-farming families from 400 hectares of the Central Mindanao University (CMU) premises face eviction, and its inevitable consequence, hunger. ARWC stands with the farmers who have tilled and nurtured the land for decades.

In their defense of land and life, the women and men peasants have organised a Camp Out in front of the CMU since May 2011, a peaceful campaign by the peasants with the aspiration to freely cultivate the lands which they can call their own. However, the peaceful protest was met with bullets and harassment. The guards indiscriminately fired at the farmers wounding 6 men and women farmers, tore down the protest camp, took away the cooking utensils and other essentials, and destroyed the group’s loudspeaker to stop them from continuing their protest. The violent assault on June 14 2011 perpetrated by the CMU to force out the farmers from their land was not an isolated case. The long history of their peasant struggle for land were systematically met with intense harassment and violence over the years.

The Asian Rural Women's Coalition (ARWC) vehemently condemns the harassment and human rights violations perpetrated by the Central Mindanao University as means of forcing the BTL women and men farmers to leave their farm-lots and prohibiting them from continuing to till the lands.

The ARWC expresses its support and solidarity to the women and men peasants who remain to be vigilant and courageous, despite the odds, in fighting for their rights to their land, livelihood and life. Even for more than a decade of struggle, they have continued to stand by their principles, willing to risk their lives, and hope for the realisation of their demands. ARWC especially salutes the women for courageously fighting for their rights, as mothers, as sisters, as farmers.

The Asian Rural Women’s Coalition, comprising more than 700 women from various sectors coming from 21 countries in Asia joins the call of the women and men peasants to Defend Agrarian Rights, Uphold Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms!

The Women United Will Never Be Defeated!
Long Live International Solidarity!

Asian Rural Women's Coalition (ARWC)
22 June 2011