Three women were injured at a sugarcane farm in Silay City, Negros Occidental, after the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) allegedly decided to return the landholding to its former landowner, a decade after the government acquired the hacienda and placed it under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), Task Force Mapalad (TFM) said in a press release Sunday, Jan. 19.
At least three women were injured Friday, Jan. 17, when about 15 armed blue guards and their companions “attacked” them, TFM claimed.
The victims, along with 23 other Task Force Mapalad peasants and their family members, tried to stop a tractor from entering the 44-hectare Hacienda Bias in Brgy. Guimbala-on, Silay City, where the farm workers were supposed to harvest sugarcane, TFM said.
“We are condemning this cruel and criminal act,” Erlina Blancaflor, 54, among the CARP beneficiaries of the hacienda, was quoted as saying in the press release.
Blancaflor suffered contusions and lacerations in different parts of her body after she tried to climb onto the tractor and was kicked away causing her to be dragged by the farm vehicle, TFM said. *