Gunmen strafe house of land program beneficiary

Thursday, January 19, 2012

KIDAPAWAN CITY -- Unidentified gunmen strafed the house of an agrarian reform beneficiary in a village in Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat, wounding a 38-year-old woman at around 1 a.m. Tuesday.

Wounded was Mary Jean Hiso, wife of Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) beneficiary Allan Hiso, who is a land guard in one of the areas of the 909-hectare palm oil plantation, located in Barangay EJC Montilla, Tacurong City.

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Tacurong City police director, Superintendent Gualberto Tuzon, said the victim was hit in the different parts of her body and was rushed at the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Hospital in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat.

Tuzon and his men recovered from the crime scene more than 10 empty shells of automatic rifles.

The Hisos were asleep when the incident happened. Their house is located about 50 meters away from the detachment of the Army's 33rd Infantry Battalion.

Of the two houses that stood within the 270-hectare palm plantation, one of the areas occupied by at least 300 Carp beneficiaries, only Hiso's house was attacked, reports said.

The house owned by the Besonias was spared. The Besonias, however, panicked when they heard the gunshots, according to one of the members of the family identified as Genevieve.

Immediately after the attack, Tuzon and his men scoured the area and confiscated from the security guards their issued firearms for inspection.

They also invited the guards assigned at the area for investigation. Tuzon said they wanted to know if the empty shells they recovered from Hiso's house matched the bullets of the confiscated firearms of the plantation guards.

At least 10 security guards of the plantation were invited for questioning, Tuzon said.

He added the incident at the plantation was the second this January. The first bloody incident was last January 10 when a group of Carp beneficiaries, led by a certain Eleazar Gallardo, reportedly attacked the plantation that led to the killing of two guards and the wounding of two others.

Land disputes as to the ownership of the plantation was one of the motives in the bloody incident, Tuzon said.

The 909-hectare plantation, owned by the Montilla family of Tacurong City, was already distributed among hundreds of plantation workers through compulsory acquisition under the Carp years ago.

The Montillas, however, questioned the distribution and filed charges against the beneficiaries for occupying the land, which they believed was illegal.