Soon after the the new military chief of staff Alexander Yano assumed his post and announced a bounty system to reward soldiers fighting the counter-insurgency war, a farmer-leader was shot dead in Davao City. Also check the News Patrol report here from ABS-CBNNews.com.
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas said of the murder of Celso Pojas:
It seems that this is the opening salvo of the new Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Alexander Yano’s new reign of terror
Pojas is KMP’s regional spokesperson in Southern Mindanao and leader of the Farmers Association of Davao City. His causes and those of KMP and FADC have put him in the news. Read his statements here, here, and here. In the most recent commemoration of the Mendiola massacre, Pojas told the Inquirer that:
Our fellow farmers who were brutally slain during the Mendiola massacre died calling for a genuine land program. Until now, justice has been denied. [Under] the Arroyo regime, the plight of [the] farmers [remains] the same
He did not know that he will join the roster of farmer-martryrs in less a few months time.
Like many farmers, Pojas was very unimpressed by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program:
The CARP as been designed as the ultimate answer to the problems of landlessness and poverty of the wide mass of Filipino farming families. But 20 years since it has been implemented, the plight of the farmers has worsened. Land distribution and amortization rates are costly, that farmers who availed of CARP are now buried to their necks with credit to the government, the Land Bank and local usurers due to the high prices of fertilizers and seeds
Pojas’ murder brings to 904 the number of activists, critics, lawyers and other “enemies” liquidated under the Arroyo administration since 2001. Just a few days ago, Karapatan placed the figure at 903.
The authorities must identify, hunt down, find and prosecute Pojas’ murderer/s. Otherwise, the number of the dead will continue to rise and the so-called death squads would appear to have been egged on to “finish off” more activists who the military has for the longest time has mislabeled as “enemies of the state”.