DON CARLOS, Bukidnon -- Some 1,000 families of Lumads, Muslims and Christians who started occupying portions of the 1,766 hectares of land declared by the Supreme Court as ancestral land of the Daguiwaas clan, complained against a series of harassments allegedly by policemen of this municipality.
This developed as the Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC), a tri-people grassroots organization assisting the land claimants, condemned what it described as “obstruction of justice” by elements of the Don Carlos Police Station who were allegedly behind the harassment against the members of the Daguiwaas clan.
From February 7-8 and on February 10, the Daguiwaas clan complained against the policemen who allegedly fired M-79 grenade launchers and M-15 rifles towards the direction of the land occupants, though no one was hurt as the bullets landed on open fields.
The local policemen, however, claimed that they were “ambushed” by the members of the clan while patrolling the area, a claim vehemently belied by Benjamin Daguiwaas, president of the Daguiwaas Clan Foundation that leads the land claimants.
“They fired upon us from a distance and then they will come near us to tell us that we were the ones that fired upon them. How can that be possible when the direction of the bullets were towards us?” Daguiwaas asked.
He alleged that the policemen were with some armed civilians who are grantees of Certificates of Land Ownership Award by the Department of Agrarian Reform, but added that the CLOAs are “actually illegal because they were issued by the DAR after the Supreme Court has granted us this land.”
In 1988, the Commission on Settlement of Land Problem (COSLAP) decided to grant the 1,766 of the 4,000 hectares of land claimed by the Daguiwaases as part of their ancestral domain.Since the COSLAP decision was challenged, the Supreme Court, in 1989, decided with “finality” to sustain the ruling of COSLAP, but since then, over 50 installation orders penned by local Sheriff Tayron Tan could never be implemented.
Daguiwaas said that the installation orders could not be implemented because “some powerful politicians and big businessmen” have reportedly been “using money and their influence to block us from actually occupying and making productive use of our land.”
The clan named the Zubiris, the family of Bukidnon governor, among the politicians who are allegedly blocking their actual installation on the land.Among the alleged “squatters” the claimants have identified are Capitalists Danding Cojuanco, the Del Monte Corporation and the Bukidnon Farms Inc. They also named some of the Sorianos, Simbalons, Palmadas.
“The governor’s family has a 200-hectare banana plantation that encroached into our 1,766 hectares ancestral land,” Daguiwaas said.
Meanwhile, MPC Council Official Jose Akmad, who was here with two other MPC officials, in condemning the alleged harassement, said: “It is unfortunate that the law enforcers here seem to be the ones obstructing justice."
Akmad suggested for higher authorities to conduct and immediate investigation against the local policemen that allegedly harassed the land claimants and “they should be brought to the bar of justice if found obstructing justice.”
Akmad said that “unless these supposed law enforcers are punished, the people would lost their trust on this government and may conclude that this is a government of injustice.”
An official of the Community and Environment Office here, requesting not to be named, said that the Daguiwaases “could have initiated a legal proceeding asking proper government bodies to cancel the CLOAs issued to some individuals.”
Daguiwaas narrated that in 33 years of their legal battle, there were already 30 of them who were allegedly murdered by people they suspected to be “goons of the moneyed” people behind the squatting of their land.
There have been a number of attempts to re-occupy their land in the past, but the claimants ended up abandoning it also as they were met with alleged harassments that led to the murder of some clan members and burning of their houses.
The latest fatalities they reported were those in January of last year where seven died and a number of houses were torched.
The latest land occupation attempt that the claimants did was after the December 25, 2006 meeting of all tribal leaders involved. More than 900 families joined the land occupation but they are yet occupying just a portion of the land along the boundaries in the eastern part. (PRESS RELEASE)
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