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Philippines, BACOLOD CITY - A militant sugar-cane
workers’ union slammed the alleged illegal arrest and detention of two
of its elderly members in northern Negros, one of whom hosted a meeting to
discuss their problems and to plan for the annual Labor Day
commemorations. Adelina Paglinawan, 70, and Dalmacio
Castro, 55, both members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW),
were “forcibly arrested” in hacienda Amparo, barangay Mabini,
Escalante City, around 5:30 a.m. on April 27 by 14 members of the city
police, Regional Mobile Group and Citizens’ Armed Forces Geographic Unit
(Cafgu). The union counts 102 of the
hacienda’s 230 workers as members of the Hacienda Amparo Farm Workers’
Association-NFSW. Three days before the arrest,
Paglinawan hosted the union’s meeting at her home to talk about their
recent discovery that the hacienda -- supposedly already approved for
distribution to them under the comprehensive agrarian reform program --
was instead being sold to Mayor Santiago Barcelona for use as a low-cost
housing site. The NFSW said the arresting team was
guided by hacienda overseer Joemarie Castro and led by a Boy Dacumos and
by a Senior Police Officer 3 Dieta, reportedly the assistant commander of
the Cafgu detachment in hacienda Binabuno, 7 km from Amparo. Paglinawan and Castro were brought to
the Escalante police station where they were detained and interrogated for
four hours. The union said that a still
unidentified police officer asked Paglinawan why she regularly hosted
meetings at her home and what she and her fellow union members discussed. When she replied that they talked about
their agrarian problems and the May 1 rally, the officer allegedly warned
her and Castro that the next time they were seen meeting, they would be
“strafed.” The Amparo workers’ ordeal began in
1998, when the landowner’s son-in-law allegedly hired and armed 12
“goons” with rifles. In May 1998 the goons allegedly shot at
the homes of union members Polding Montebon and Dennis Mahilum. No one was
hurt and the union filed criminal charges. In July 1999 the farm lots of the union
members, originally given to the hacienda workers to plant food crops in
lieu of a wage increase in 1986, were ordered plowed over and planted to
sugar cane by the landowners’ son-in-law. In July 2000 the 102 unionists filed a
petition with the Escalante Municipal Agrarian Reform Office (Maro) for
the hacienda’s coverage under agrarian reform. In September 2002 the
Maro approved the land’s coverage under the voluntary-offer-to-sell
scheme. At a dialogue on March 29 the workers
said the landowner’s daughter sought a one-month extension to wait for
her brother to come home from the United States before the Maro could
begin surveying the property. However, on April 14 the union members
were taken aback when, instead of Maro personnel, the property was
surveyed by people from Barcelona’s office. They learned that the mayor
planned to purchase 25 hectares of the land for a housing project. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
