JANUARY 2018
Opisyal na Pahayagan ng National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates - Youth
y
(NNARA-Youth)
Twitter @nnarayouth
EDITORIAL On the 31st year of Mendiola Massacre:
Peasant massacres continue under Duterte An entire generation has passed since the 1987 massacre in Mendiola. The children it has orphaned has now grown into adults facing the realities of poverty. Yet justice remains elusive. Majority of Filipino peasants remain deprived of the lands they till – the very situation which compelled thousands of them to march to the Palace gates that fateful day. The Mendiola Massacre occurred on January 22, 1987, when troops of thenPresident Cory Aquino opened fire at thousands of farmers protesting at the foot of Malacanang. Thirteen died while hundreds were wounded as armed state forces chased scampering protesters down
the inroads of Manila. This happened barely a year after the People Power revolt of February 25, 1986 which put Aquino in power. Mendiola teaches us lessons on the violent and irreconcilable contradictions between the landlord class and the
peasantry. But today, noise made by rabid Duterte supporters seem to make us remember Mendiola as an evil conjured solely by the so-called “yellows,” moreso since Aquino was still upheld as a democracy icon regimes after the carnage. However, evil also begins when we are made to remember the massacre only to forget and gloss over rampant peasant killings and massacres currently perpetrated by the state, sanctioned by the Chief Fascist Duterte himself. Duterte’s hands are also stained with peasant blood. 110 farmers have been killed for political reasons since Duterte’s rise to power. The victims were leaders and members of peasant organizations insisting their right to land. This figure includes those killed in six incidents of massacres. The first of these occurred on September 3, 2016 in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija. Around 60 farmers were turn to NEXT PAGE