Agrarian reform chief calls in Negros troops
Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman last week condemned the killing of two land reform beneficiaries and the wounding of six other farmers in a sugar plantation in Negros Occidental province and asked police and military authorities to send more troops to the contested Hacienda Velez-Malaga.
In a strongly worded statement, Pangandaman said the farmers had every right to enter the property since it was already awarded to them. He ordered the Department of Agrarian Reform's legal office to assist the families of the victims in the filing of charges and to "do its best to bring all the perpetrators to justice."
The two farmers gunned down by security guards of the hacienda were among 57 of over 100 beneficiaries of a land grant under the government's agrarian reform program who Pangandaman had personally installed last March, two months after they staged a hunger strike in front of his office in Quezon City.
Pangandaman also warned that "heads would roll" in the provincial DAR office if he found that they had delayed the survey he ordered to determine the boundary of the land granted to the farmer-beneficiaries.
Although police officials said they were readying homicide charges against the hacienda guards, Pangandaman described the killing as "cold-blooded murder."
"Enough is enough," Pangandaman stated, warning that the government "would not allow anybody to scuttle the gains of land reform."
(PIA)