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Philippines - Hacienda Luisita - Call for settlement of land conflicts

Hon. RENATO CORONA
Chief Justice
Supreme Court
Manila
c/o Clerk of Court (02) 525-3208 

October 6, 2010

Dear Chief Justice Corona,

Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) is an international human rights organization working for the worldwide implementation of the human right to food and in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

I am writing in relation to the case of Hacienda Luisita, a 6500 hectares of land situated in municipalities of Concepcion and La Paz, and Tarlac City. In December 2003, 5,339 farm workers petitioned to revoke the stock distribution option (SDO) which was implemented in 1989. In November 2004, the joint strike of farm workers and sugar mill workers resulted in a violent dispersal that caused the death of seven picketers and serious injuries to more than a hundred persons. Killings of supporters of farm workers also continued in the succeeding months after the unfortunate incident. While the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) ordered the cancellation of the SDO scheme and the distribution of some 4,915 hectares of land to be covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in 2005, the Supreme Court granted a Temporary Restraining Order in 2006. We laud the Supreme Court for the creation of a Mediation Panel to settle the conflict as fast as possible and are hoping that the solution will truly respond to the need to uplift the well being of the farm workers, especially their right to adequate food.

The SDO implemented in Hacienda Luisita in 1989 merely distributed corporate shares to beneficiaries, in lieu of land redistribution.  As past experience has shown, this scheme cannot be equated with land reform. The more than 15 years of SDO at Hacienda Luisita only further deepened poverty through diminished work days and very low take home pay and lack of economic security as workers and beneficiaries of agrarian reform. The scheme also allowed the land owner to continue controlling the use, disposition and benefit from the fruits of the land. Ninety five percent (95 %) of the more or less 7,000 farm workers only received P 9.50 per week as take home pay. The sale and conversion initiated by the landowner, such as the 500-hectare land sold to a bank in 1996, reduced the area devoted to agricultural production and further diminished an already scarce work days available for farm workers. Due to the failure of the SDO to uplift the living conditions of the farm workers, many of them occupied hacienda lands to make a living out of farming at the risk of possibly being cited for contempt by the Honorable Court. Because the land has not been transferred yet, occupants do not get any support from the government. Others, men in particular, work in construction sites. Many young women also work as household help or other menial tasks outside of the hacienda for family survival. The DAR acknowledged the fact that the SDO failed to address the joblessness and poverty obtaining in the hacienda and therefore ordered its decision to revoke the SDO in 2005.

Furthermore, the compromise agreement initiated by the landowners and the farmers in August 2010 was met with criticisms by many land reform advocates in the Philippines. The compromise asked the farm workers to choose between retaining the stock share or opting for land redistribution of 1,366 hectares (about one-third of the land originally intended for distribution) and promised a financial package of P 150 million on a basis once the compromise agreement is approved by the Supreme Court. According to the management of Hacienda Luisita, more than 7,000 farm workers voted to retain the SDO, while only 139 opted to have a parcel of land. P 20 million was initially given to the farm workers of the hacienda as part of the financial assistance. The critics of the compromise agreement claim that the farmers signed the compromise under duress and that there were farmers who were unaware about the vote. If P 150 million were to be given equally to farm workers, they would receive a mere P15,000 per family. This would not contribute to solving the root cause of poverty in the Hacienda. Moreover, a provision in the said compromise would take away from the farm workers the right to oppose in the future the plan of the owners to convert into non-agricultural use the other portions of the estate. Not only is the compromise agreement inimical to the interest of the farmers, it is also not in conformity with the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the validity of Department of Agrarian Reform Memorandum 88 which bans the further conversion of farm lands to non-agricultural use.

FIAN International strongly urges the Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court to seriously study if retaining the SDO at the hacienda is in consonance with the social justice provision of the 1987 Philippine Constitution and is the best option to realize the right to food of the farm workers. Article 2 of the Philippine Constitution, provides that "The State shall promote a just and dynamic social order that will ...free the people from poverty through policies that promote...a rising standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all." As a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Philippine government has the obligation under Article 11 of the said covenant to fulfil the right of the Hacienda Luisita farm workers "to an adequate standard of living for himself/herself and his/her family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions". I would like to recall, Honorable Chief Justice, the primacy of human rights law in this context and the importance of agrarian reform to guarantee the human rights of the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita.

Sincerely,

Flavio Valente
FIAN International
Secretary General