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   NATION
More violence mars Luisita protest
By Benjie Villa
The Philippine Star 11/10/2004
 
HACIENDA LUISITA, Tarlac — This sugar estate had to shut down its sugar mill, the biggest in Luzon, yesterday morning after briefly operating it since Monday noon due to what the management called the "violent and destructive" actions of "trouble-makers" in the ranks of the protesting employees and farmworkers.

Shortly after the sugar mill’s operations were resumed Monday, some of the protesters punctured the tires of a number of trucks carrying newly harvested sugarcane, officials of the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) and Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) said.

At the height of the protest last weekend, the tires of trucks loaded with sugarcane that got stranded due to the sugar mill’s shutdown were also punctured, the HLI and CAT management added.

Fearing that their trucks may be set on fire, sugar planters have decided to bring their produce to the sugar mill of Sweet Crystals Integrated Sugar Mills Corp. in Porac, Pampanga, the HLI and CAT officials said.

They said sugarcane planters in Tarlac as well as in Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan and elsewhere in Central and Northern Luzon fear incurring losses due to the shutdown of the Hacienda Luisita sugar mill.

The HLI, put up in the late 1980s, oversees the 6,000-hectare sugar estate. It is "co-owned" by the family of former President Corazon Aquino and its more than 5,000 farmworkers under the stock distribution scheme of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). The CAT, on the other hand, operates the sugar mill.

The milling operations got stalled at noon last Saturday after more than 20 members of the CAT Labor Union (CATLU) manning the boiler division walked out of their posts and barricade the mill’s Gate 2.

Members of the United Luisita Workers’ Union (ULWU) joined in, blocking the sugar mill’s Gate 1.

The CATLU, which represents the 768 mill workers, has been on a deadlock in its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) talks with the management.

The ULWU represents the farmworkers, 327 of whom, including a number of its officers, were laid off last month.

The protesters have gotten the support of activists from militant groups Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Nagkakaisang Manggagawa ng Tarlac, Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Tarlac, League of Filipino Students and Anakbayan.

An hour before the protest action got underway last Saturday, suspected communist rebels torched some 20 hectares of sugarcane in Barangay Murcia, Concepcion town.

The protesters had clashed twice with policemen deployed here, first at about 6 p.m. last Saturday, and the second, before dawn the next day.

The protest leaders blamed the police for the clashes, but authorities denied this, saying the protesters started it all by hurling stones, pillboxes and teargas cannisters at the anti-riot contingent. One of those reportedly hurt in Monday’s violence was Superintendent Rudy Lacadin, Tarlac City police chief.

Some protesters and activists have reportedly set up a "checkpoint" along the sugar estate’s main road in Barangay Balete, turning away sugar mill employees who wanted to return to work.

Rene Galang, retrenched former president of ULWU, said they will continue their protest. Anakpawis party-list Reps. Crispin Beltran and Rafael Mariano, have prodded the protesters to continue their mass actions.

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command has withdrawn soldiers it earlier had deployed here although it has placed the Army’s 69th Infantry Battalion stationed near the plantation to be on "alert."

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