Philippines: Land struggle in Mampising, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao

On November 15, 2003, some 250 agrarian reform beneficiaries, who held a peaceful demonstration outside the main plantation gate of Tortuga Valley Plantation Inc. (TVPI), were violently dispersed by armed plantation guards in the presence of members of the police. The armed guards fired their guns at the protesting beneficiaries, inflicting injuries on many of them. The peasants had launched the peaceful protest action to call attention to their demand for a renegotiations of an unjust lease contract. After receiving land within the frames of the agrarian reform, the farmers had been tricked into a onerous contract with the TVPI and are now facing hunger and malnutrition.  

An international intervention is urgently necessary to support the agrarian reform beneficiaries’ demand for a fair and just contract over 425 hectares of land awarded to them by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). Please write polite letters to the government requesting them to fulfil these beneficiaries’ right to feed themselves.