BIGAS, HINDI BALA: Aid, Rights and Justice for Filipino farmers
We, artists, writers, cultural workers, media professionals and creative individuals from various disciplines, collectively denounce the state’s violent dispersal of hungry farmers and lumad in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato on April 1, 2016. We echo the powerful call bigas, hindi bala (rice, not bullets) – as we stand in solidarity with our farmers.
The farmers’ demands were clear: urgent food aid in the face of the catastrophic drought caused by El Niño. They had suffered long enough: bearing the brunt of crop losses, hunger and debt. They had every justification to unite and protest: there is a state of calamity but government failed to provide concrete assistance for many on the ground.
On March 30, some 6,000 farmers from the towns of Makilala, Mlang, Tulunan, Magpet, Roxas, Antipas, Arakan, and Kidapawan held a human barricade across the Cotabato-Davao highway in Kidapawan City to ask for 15,000 sacks of rice. Government refused to immediately address this demand.
Instead, on April 1, police violently dispersed the barricade with water cannons and bullets. Two people were killed and scores were wounded. Survivors who sought refuge in the nearby church were then harassed by men in uniform. More than 80 persons were rounded up by police, among them pregnant women, senior citizens, health workers and even those who sustained gunshot wounds. The farmers are wronged each day until all fabricated charges levied against them are completely junked, and the perpetrators are brought to justice.
The farmers asked for rice; they were left to starve. There is something fundamentally wrong when the people who produce food for the whole nation are hungry, landless, and most vulnerable to poverty, disasters, and the impacts of climate change. We demand immediate relief for the farmers of North Cotabato and other drought-affected regions of the country and long-term strategies to uplift the lives of our nation’s farmers.
The farmers asked for rice; they were dismissed and dispersed instead. We denounce the government’s actions as a grave violation of civil rights, a direct assault on the right to public participation and the freedom of expression.
We therefore demand justice for those killed, injured, missing and illegally arrested. We demand accountability from those in power.
The farmers asked for rice; they were shot at in return. This incident is not an isolated one, for our history is witness to the degree of state brutality and violence against farmers. We remember the bloodshed in Sag-od, Northern Samar (1981); Escalante, Negros Occidental (1985); Mendiola, Manila (1987); and Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac (2004).
We thus unite around the aspiration for social justice on a larger scale; for a system which treats farmers and other members of the toiling masses not as enemies of the state or cheap labor to be exploited and dismissed, but as sectors vital to genuine development and to our very survival as a people.
Until now farmers are protesting in other drought-affected areas – in Koronadal, Davao, Pagadian, Malaybalay, Cagayan de Oro, and many other Kidapawans until government heeds their demand for aid, rights and justice.
As artists, we cannot sit idly while tragedies like Kidapawan unfold. We now strive to merge our collective indignation and creative energies with the force of Kidapawan farmers and the rest of the Filipino people hungry for justice.
Bigas, hindi bala! Aid, rights and justice for farmers now!