HACIENDA LUISITA — The more than 5,000-strong United Luisita
Workers’ Union (ULWU) will be filing murder and frustrated
murder charges against soldiers under the Armed Forces’ Northern
Luzon Command (Nolcom) and elements of the Central Luzon regional
police force for the Nov. 16 violent dispersal here that left at
least 14 people dead and hundreds of others injured.
According to lawyer Nenita Mahinay, counsel for
the ULWU, the recognized labor group of farmworkers here, to be
included, too, in the charges will be the nine policemen earlier
found to be positive for gunpowder burns.
None of the said lawmen, who were among the
more than a thousand anti-riot contingent then, were from Tarlac.
They were earlier identified by authorities as Senior Insp. Sabino
Vengco and PO1 Christopher Villanueva, both of the Bataan police
provincial office; P01s Noriel Marcelo, Michael Santiago and
Joselito Ramos, all from Nueva Ecija; Jonnie Francia, Venancio
Asuncion Jr. and Irwin Monreal, from Aurora; and PO2 Noel Velasco,
of the police Regional Mobile Group-3 based in Camp Olivas,
Pampanga.
Mahinay added that they are still collecting
the names of the Nolcom soldiers, who were with the Army’s 69th
Infantry Battalion and the AFP’s Civil Disturbance Unit,
similarly deputized by Labor Sec. Patricia Sto. Tomas to reinforce
the police anti-riot force.
She said that they will also include the
policemen and soldiers’ respective commanding officers, and
those who were assigned as “commanders-on-the-ground,” in the
charges.
As the Department of Labor and Employment
(DOLE) ruled that the combined strike carried out by the ULWU and
its sister-union, the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union
(CATLU), that started last Nov. 6 was “illegal,” Sto. Tomas
then ordered the dispersal of the picketline at the Gate 1 of the
sugar refinery here.
Several skirmishes between policemen and the demonstrators already
took place since then, but the most violent was last Nov. 16 when
gunshots were fired at the strikers, allegedly by elements of the
anti-riot contingent.
REMOVED?
But the management of the Hacienda Luisita,
Inc. (HLI), the corporate farming firm where ULWU members are
being regarded as “co-owners” by former President Corazon
Aquino’s family under the stock distribution scheme of the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), claimed that Mahinay
is no longer the counsel for the union.
On the basis of a resolution purportedly
adopted by the ULWU’s board of directors, the activist lawyer
was replaced last October by one Zoilo dela Cruz, who is said to
be the president of the National Congress of Unions in the Sugar
Industry of the Philippines (NACUSIP).
Mahinay’s “removal” as ULWU counsel came
following the inclusion of Rene Galang and Ildefonso Pingul, the
union’s respective president and vice president, and its eight
other officers in the dismissal by the HLI of 327 farmworkers last
Oct. 1.
Also on the basis of a resolution, Galang and
his colleagues were replaced by a group in the ULWU led by a
certain Ronaldo Alcantara.
But Galang’s group maintained that it was
still the legitimate authority in the ULWU, since no election has
been held for their replacement. As such, Galang added that
Mahinay remains to be the union’s recognized counsel.
HLI’s decision to include Galang and his
colleagues in the mass layoff came while the management and the
union had just started holding this year’s round of collective
bargaining agreement (CBA).
CLASS SUIT
Aside from charges of murder and frustrated
murder, Mahinay said that the ULWU, along with the CATLU will
similarly file a class suit against the government and Mrs.
Aquino’s family on behalf of the victims of the dispersal.
A number of local officials in the province
have already vowed support for the planned charges and the class
suit, said Tarlac City councilor Abel Ladera, a resident of
Barangay Balete here and a former employee at the Cojuangco-owned
sugar mill.
This, as Ladera noted pronouncements coming
from higher authorities and the Cojuangco family, particularly
former Rep. Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr. and his nephew, Tarlac
second district Rep. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, that the
violence was started by the strikers “indicate a looming
white-wash in the investigations.”
For this, he urged the Senate and the Lower
House, whose members have already vowed to look into the incident,
as well as the “loopholes” in the CARP, to help the victims’
families, as well as the CATLU and ULWU, in “ferreting out the
truth.”
Mahinay said that they have “a strong
case,” as she pointed to video footages and still photos of the
incident, as well as accounts by eyewitnesses, that it was the
policemen and soldiers who were at the time “armed to the
teeth.”
Both Galang and CATLU president, Ric Ramos,
said that when the Army’s V-150 armored personnel carrier (APC)
then failed to drive the strikers away from the CAT factory’s
Gate 1, snipers positioned on a nearby sugarcane field and at the
mill’s reservoir started shooting at the rallyists.
MISSING
As authorities maintained that only seven were
killed in the dispersal due to gunshot wounds, Galang and Ramos,
as well as the human rights group, Karapatan, said that by their
own accounts, there were 14 casualties, which included two
infants.
According to Karapatan-Tarlac’s spokesman,
Emil Paragas, a fact-finding mission they conducted during the
weekend revealed that “the number of those confirmed dead may
still rise due to eyewitness accounts that a big number of dead
bodies were carried into the sugar mill by the soldiers and
policemen, but these disappeared for unknown reasons.”
Besides, Paragas said that they also found out
that 39 people from the Visayas and Mindanao, who work as seasonal
sacadas (sugarcane cutters) here, were “still unaccounted
for.”
The said sacadas were being brought here by
labor contractors identified as Boy Malig, Eduardo Inakay and
Emmanuel Tobias.
Galang said that the actual number of sacadas
here who came from southern parts of the country could not be
determined, since they do not belong to either the ULWU or CATLU.
“It is only the people in the management who
know their identities,” he added.