Friday, September 21, 2007 Speak out: It is Arroyo that should be penalized
RECENT news from the local media outlets have it that sugar planters are alarmed over the impending imposition of penalty on all sugar export to the US if the Philippine government fails to answer a complaint initiated by International Labor Rights Forum on the human rights violations in the Philippines.
We are fully aware that the imposition of penalty of P662.00 for every ton of sugar export to US will hit the medium and small sugar producers, especially the ARBs. An estimated 90 percent of the sugar cane growers are small and poor ARBs and medium planters.
Said penal imposition against the US-Arroyo regime is the result of international campaign against the CIA-instigated extrajudicial killings and trade union repression in the country and a justifiable form of pressure to put an end to the rising cases of political killings under the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
It is a civilized world reaction of civilized people to the uncivilized and inhuman treatment of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to her critics and political opposition, including those from the labor and peasants organizations.
In Negros, the names of NFSW leaders Edwin Bargamento, Manuel Batolina, and Mario Fernandez are included in the long list of victims of summary executions perpetrated by the military and its “death squads.” The disappeared NFSW education committee staff Perseus Geagoni is still a painful experience for his wife and children.
They are genuine and sincere labor activists who sacrificed their lives serving the exploited and oppressed sugar workers of Negros. They die against the backdrop of intense repression of workers and peasants in the sugar industry.
Hacienda workers continue to live in a very miserable existence. Whenever the workers complain of their meager income and unpaid salaries, job termination and union repression would be the employer’s answer to their plight. The lives of agrarian reform beneficiaries that comprise the bulk of sugar cane growers had deteriorated and been displaced due to lack of capital and support from the government.
Laborers still have to bear the low salaries and massive retrenchment in the sugar mills and industrial and commercial establishment because “flexible labor schemes” implemented under the GATT-WTO agreement give way to massive “contractualization” and union busting that remove the right of workers to job security.
In the name of anti-terrorism campaign more than 880 activists and government critics have been killed and more than 184 missing since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency. Even the majority of medium and big planters condemn such high records of political killings.
But why should the crimes of human rights violations and trade union repression charged against the sugarcane growers when it is Arroyo that should be responsible?
The international pressures to stop political killings in the country are now slowly felt even by the elite class of the sugar industry.
If our sugar leaders have enough concern on the conditions of the human rights violations and trade union repression in the country, they should not stand as if their only concern is their interest in profits.
They should also look after the interest of other players in the sugar industry, especially the poor and small ARBs and the sugar workers.
Political killings should be stopped immediately and all the victims of extrajudicial killings and trade union repression should be indemnified!
