(We yield this space to the statement of the Center for Women’s Resources due to its timeliness. – Ed.)
THE CENTER for Women’s Resources (CWR), a data bank and research institution for women, vehemently condemns the massacre of nine farmers – including four women and two minors – on Oct. 20 in Sagay City, Negros Occidental. The victims were shot, with others also burned.
The massacre happened with only a few days before the Peasant Month comes to an end. This is not an isolated case under the Duterte administration. From July 2016 to October 2018, there are already 157 farmers murdered, 24 of which are women.
The Sagay massacre highlights the plight of our farmers, especially peasant women. It underscores the evils of the hacienda system which exploits millions of farmers, and the failure of the government to pursue genuine agrarian reform.
Despite decades of government’s implementation of agrarian reform program, 70 percent of farmers in the country remain landless and are forced to sell their labor for meager income. For the longest time, farmers endure poverty and hunger, landlessness and land grabbing, high prices of basic commodities, and intense militarization, harassment and attacks.
In particular, peasant women still remain an invisible force in agricultural production. There are only 644,000 peasant women counted in agricultural production in the Philippines. In addition, based on the data collated by CWR, female farm workers get 8.5 percent lower wage than their male counterparts. In sugarcane plantations, gender wage gap is at 21 percent.
Farmers either die of poverty or of brutal murders. They are mercilessly murdered by social injustice.
We decry the unabated attacks against farmers and farm workers in various provinces in the country. We denounce the continuing red-tagging against peasant organizations.
We stand with farmers and farm workers in fighting for their rights and in seeking the elusive justice, and in holding the government accountable to all injustices against them.
We call on all freedom loving people and human rights advocates to decry the continuing injustice against farmers and to support them in their struggle against landlessness.
