PRESS RELEASE
22 January 2012
Urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) has warned that an event as tragic as the 1987 Mendiola Massacre is bound happen again under the US-Aquino Regime, considering the violence that go with the administration's demolition rampage on urban poor communities.
A similar event is to be ensued by the ‘dispecable desire’ of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan to maintain its ownership of the Hacienda Luisita land.
“The clan will do everything, not only the ouster of the Supreme Court head, but the use of brute force to quell the ever louder call of the people to redistribute the lands of Luisita to the farmers,” said Leona Sarzuela, Kadamay national chairperson.
Several urban poor groups joined a commemorative action at the foot of Mendiola Friday for the 25th year of the massacre. The groups cried for justice for the peasants that were razed by bullets on February 22, 1987 under the Cory Aquino administration.
Like mother, like son
“Like mother, like son! Same blood runs in the veins of Aquino and her mother: blood of brutality and greed that has buried millions of Filipinos deep into poverty,” said Sarzuela.
According to her, “The Palace’s inaction and preferred silence on the violent demolition in San Juan are an expression of Aquino’s condonation of the Ejercitos’ brutality. Fascism operates under the skirt of the Aquino administration.”
“No wonder that in the coming days, Aquino will employ the military and police force only to safeguard its possession of the Luisita lands, with the patronage of other landlord clans in the country,” Sarzuela added.
Kadamay vowed to further the commitment of the urban poor sector in the call to redistribute the Luisita land to the farmers, and for the realization of a genuine agrarian reform program in the country.
Roots of poverty
Kadamay said, “The landlessness in the countryside has impelled urban migration and poverty.”
According to Sarzuela, “None of the existing policies and programs of the government has ever solved the issue of landlessness in the country.”
“Cory Aquino’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), and the revitalized version called CARPEr are deemed useless to the farmers, under the Aquino administration.”
“The government’s faulty agrarian reform program only reinforced the custody of big landlords to their lands, and even gave rise to a new breed of landlords who acquired possession of lands that Landbank has forfeited from the small farmers,” Zarsuela added.
Kadamay pointed out, “As long as landlessness in the countryside remains unanswered, people’s upheaval will eventually gain in number and strength as urban and rural poverty worsens.”###
Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay)
Militant Center of Urban Poor in the Philippines
Reference: Leona Sarzuela, national chairperson (0912.649.0392)
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