Dear Friends,

Warm greetings! Within just a fortnight, two active and courageous leaders of peasant organizations associated with Akbayan have been assassinated, one in the island of Negros, the other in the province of Davao in Mindanao . Rico Adeva, peasant leader of Task Force Mapalad, was shot dead on April 16, 2006 by four men in Barangay Bagtic, in Silay, Negros Occidental. And then on April 24, Eric Cabanit, secretary general of UNORKA, a national peasant organization was shot and killed by still unidentified men in the marketplace of Panabo town in Davao del Norte. As of this writing the 23 year old daughter of Eric who was also shot hangs to life by a thin line at the provincial hospital. Two active and committed lives snuffed out ostensibly in the name of preserving the interests of big landowners. Their crime? They were persistent in their efforts in organizing and mobilizing their peasant ranks to push for the implementation of land reform against intransigent big feudal interests bent on keeping a monopoly of large tracts of lands and on exploiting the tillers with low wages. Rico coordinates a group of organizers covering 24 haciendas in Negros Occidental encompassing about 5000 hectares. Eric, at the time of his brutal murder, was leading a campaign for the Department of Agrarian Reform to turn over the huge citrus and banana plantation owned by the Floirendo family in Davao del Norte to the peasant tillers under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. Armed only with their commitment and the strength of their organizations, these peasant leaders faced almost daily legal and physical pressures and threats not only on themselves but also on their families.

The murders of Rico Adeva and Eric Cabanit are but a few of many killings, harassments and threats inflicted on unarmed peasant activists, leaders and their followers in their insistence to rectify the injustices brought about by the centuries-old feudal system of land ownership in the country. A system of exploitation of peasant tillers and farm workers long gone in modern progressive societies remain a festering plague in this country, a clear obstacle to human liberation and social justice, to economic upliftment of rural people and to national economic development.

The sacrifices of Ka Rico and Eric and many others like them need not go in vain as we in the broad people’s movement join hands with our comrades in the peasant movement to carry on the unfinished historic task of putting an end to feudalism that has long served as a despicable yoke on the Filipino working people.

Below, we share the tribute rendered to Ka Rico by the Program of Agrarian Reform, Research and Development (PARRDS), one of many peasant NGOs and peasant groups that mourned the loss of a committed comrade.. We also reprint a brief news report on the killing of Ka Eric that appeared in page A17 of Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 26, 2006.

In peace and solidarity,

Sixto Carlos
International Secretary
Akbayan! Citizens’ Action Party (Philippines)

SOLIDARITY MESSAGE FOR TASK FORCE MAPALAD
AND KA RICO ADEVA from PARRDS
April 18, 2006

As the whole of Christendom marked the death and eventual internment of the dead Messiah in a mountain sepulcher in Golgotha, rural organizer Rico Adeva seemed to have followed the Redeemer’s path, though the said circumstance was neither the consequence of his own resolve nor the calculated result of his own choosing. Rather, it was a fate that was imposed from outside, by men with ill-intent wanting nothing more than to purchase his silence at the price of blood.

This experience occurred on the afternoon of 15 April 2006 - Black Saturday - as Adeva and his wife Nenita were on their way to the town proper of Talisay in Negros Occidental. At around 4:00 pm, as the couple was crossing Imbang River, they were accosted by three men wearing jackets and armed with .45 caliber pistols who then ordered them to turn their backs and lie on the ground. After doing so, the assailants shot Adeva, with the victim sustaining seven gunshot wounds in the head, ears, hands and torso.

According to his wife and colleagues in Task Force Mapalad (TFM), Adeva’s murder was prompted by his involvement in the struggle for agrarian reform - of preaching the gospel of rural liberation and land redistribution.

By being faithful to his calling, Adeva has earned the ire of the landed gentry of Negros which, for the past centuries, have lorded it over the people of the island - a lingering danger that we in the agrarian reform community collectievely face, wherever we may be assigned. Indeed, the profession that we have decided to pursue is not for the faint-hearted.

But by dying on that holy date of Black Saturday, Adeva has also emphasized that our lives as agrarian advocates is also an act of imitating Christ - of surrendering ourselves to others so that we may be whole, of taking part in the fullness of creation, in affirming all that is just, needed and reasonable so we may be able to catch a glimpse of the Absolute.

And we who are left behind are tasked to continue his lifework by seeking justice for Adeva and his family, and all the tillers of Negros who are struggling for their own piece of land, their humble place in the sun.

FARMER LEADER SLAIN IN DAVAO DEL NORTE

By Blanche River

Philippine Daily Inquirer, page A17, April 26, 2006

ANOTHER FARMER LEADER was gunned down in a public market in Davao del Norte Monday night, becoming the fourth agrarian reform activist to be killed this month alone.

Enrico Cabinit, secretary general of the Pambansang Ugnayan ng mga Nagsasariling Lokal na Organisasyon sa Kanayunan (UNORKA) and a farmer representative of the National Anti-Poverty Commission, died from four gunshot wounds in the head that practically blew off his skull.

His daughter, Daffodil, 23, was also shot in the chest and back. She is still in critical condition in a hospital in Tagum City. One of her lungs has given out as of press time.

The two were buying food for dinner at the Panabo public market when two unidentified men in a motorcycle shot them around 6:10 p.m.

“We hold accountable the DAR for his death. It should have resolved the agrarian reform problem in the Floirendo lands a long time ago, but there was no political will,” Unorka national council member Evangeline Mendoza said in a press conference in Quezon City yesterday.

Cabinit, 54, known among peasant organizations as “Ka Eric,” was a retrenched worker of the Floirendo banana plantation in Davao and has been organizing farmers to push for the distribution of Floirendo lands in Mindanao.

Two hours before he was killed, Cabinit and his daughter attended a dialogue between farmers and officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform, led by Undersecretary Narciso Nieto, Jr., on agrarian reform casesd in Mindanao.

The meeting ended at 4.30 p.m. with a commitment from Nieto that the DAR would send a technical team to Davao.