Coron, Palawan killing A HOT-HEADED BLUE GUARD DOESN’T REPRESENT GOV’T

By Manny Piñol

In the 25 years that I was a newsman, from the time I was a 17-year-old cub reporter of a Davao community paper to the time I resigned as senior copy editor of a national tabloid, I developed what journalists call the “nose for news.”

Through the years too, I was also able to hone the keen sense of knowing when a story is slanted or loaded to push forward a subtle message or subliminally introduce an agenda.

Read this story on the reported killing by a blue guard of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) of a farmer in Coron, Palawan: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/…/caught-on-video-coron….

“Arnel Figueroa, 44, was hit in the stomach by a single round fired by Dan Nelson Mayo, a member of the “Blue Guards” of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), on Tuesday at Yulo King Ranch (YKR).

Figueroa was a local leader of Pesante, an organization of farmers seeking the distribution of land under the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). He was the latest fatality in the decades-long battle by impoverished farmers for freedom from bondage to the soil that has taken an ugly turn,” journalist Fernando del Mundo wrote in an article published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on the incident.

The article added:

“Before, the fight was against landlords, now it is against the government,” said Libertine Amor, a lawyer for the Catholic Church-backed Climate Change Congress of the Philippines (CCCP), the umbrella group for peasant organisations.”

“We cry for justice,” the CCCP said in a statement signed by Archbishop Antonio J. Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro, and former Election Commissioner Christian Monsod. “The farmers are not pigs, they are human beings.”

Evangeline Silva, Pesante president, said Figueroa had been so happy he and several hundred farmers recently received certificates of ownership of the land they had been cultivating.

“We are not rebels. He had given us hope that we can dream on and get the land we seek peacefully,” said Silva, 43, a mother of seven children who went to Coron after her husband, also an agrarian reform activist, was killed by policemen, who claimed he was a drug pusher.

Why am I reacting to this report?

Well, first it is because the BAI is under the Dept. of Agriculture and that blue guard who shot Figueroa was hired through a security agency to protect a property which keeps hundreds of cattle owned by government.

Second, this was not a fight between government and farmers who are asking for land to till. It was an unfortunate encounter between a hot-headed blue guard and a leader of a farmers’ group occupying government land.

Third, nobody said the farmers are “pigs” and that they are “rebels.”

Fourth, this article stinks because it dramatises an unfortunate incident where an altercation between Figueroa and the blue guard resulted in the death of the farmer-leader.

It is even insinuating that President Rody Duterte was behind the killing.

Here is that paragraph:

“We are not rebels. He (Duterte) had given us hope that we can dream on and get the land we seek peacefully,” said Silva, 43, a mother of seven children who went to Coron after her husband, also an agrarian reform activist, was killed by policemen, who claimed he was a drug pusher.”

I actually learned of the incident before I left for the trip to the APEC agriculture ministers’ conference in Peru and upon learning of the incident, I directed Undersecretary Ariel Cayanan to conduct a department investigation into the matter.

There are, however, some things that I would like people to understand.

The land in question is government property. Had proper representations been made, I, as Secretary of Agriculture, could have come up with an acceptable arrangement to make sure that areas not used by government could be cultivated by the farmers.

The land is not mine to give. I have no powers to do that.

To accuse the Duterte administration of being behind this killing is to ignore the policy of the President on the issue of land even when he was still Mayor.

He has always been averse to the idea of driving away people from government properties which are not being used.

There is no justification for the shooting of Figueroa for whatever reason.

But there is also no justification for the insinuation that this is a government sponsored killing to suppress people’s demand for land.

Also, there are some strange things which made me wonder whether the encounter between Figueroa and the blue guard was a “set up.”

You see, there were reports of previous “clashes” between the two groups – the guards and the farmers.

The blue guards have complained that some of the animals in the area were found to have been shot with “Indian targets,” a locally designed steel arrow loaded on a slingshot.

The farmers, on the other hand, complained that the cattle destroy their crops.

What was strange was the presence of a top official of the farmers’ group to which the victim belonged.

Here’s the Inquirer report:

“The killing was captured on a cell phone video by Maria Maaya L. Thind, 36, general secretary of the 10,000-strong Pesante. Another farmer was wounded.”

Why was she there? Did the group foresee a confrontation?

Now, they want to picture this unfortunate incident as proof that the Duterte Presidency does not care about the farmers’ demand for land.

Are they stoking a fire?

I can assure the family of the victims that justice will be done. The guilty will be brought to the bars of justice.

That’s how it is with this government now.

As to the injustices perpetrated by government against the farmers, like the Mendiola Massacre which resulted in the death of 13 farmers from Hacienda Luisita, I leave that to those who were in power at that time.

(Photo of the bloodied farmer leader downloaded from Inquirer.net; photo of Mendiola Massacre taken by my former Tempo colleague, Luis Liwanag.)