Luisita farmers ask Corona to resolve dispute

MANILA, Philippines - Farmer beneficiaries of the beleaguered Hacienda Luisita owned by the Conjuangco-Aquino clan have asked the Supreme Court to review the four-year-old temporary restraining order (TRO) on the distribution of parcels of land to 10,000 farmers.

“We humbly submit to your honorable office our appeal asking the Supreme Court to act with dispatch and resolve the controversial agrarian case of Hacienda Luisita in favor of agrarian reform beneficiaries,” said the two-page letter signed by leaders of Unyon ng Mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) and other farmers’ groups.                         

The Court issued in June 2006, a restraining order that temporarily stopped the orders of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to distribute 6,453 hectares to the farmers and revoke the stock distribution option offered by the Cojuangco-Aquino clan.

The farmers also complained that the landowners are supposedly militarizing 10 barangays inside the hacienda. They also claimed that the Luisita Estate Management has been disposing hectares of land to commercial banks and foreign commercial enterprises despite the restraining order.

In the same letter, the Katipunan ng Samahang Magbubukid ng Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK) asked the Court to investigate high profile cases of denial of land rights to farmers in Southern Tagalog.

The group claimed that 8,650 hectares of prime agricultural lands in Hacienda Looc, previously placed under the land reform program, was removed from the program by the DAR to pave way for real estate projects of Manila South Coast Development Corp., a sister company of SM Holdings Inc. and Fil-Estate Realty Corp.

The group said the conversion of Hacienda Looc in Nasugbu, Batangas will displace 10,000 farming families.