Landlessness is root cause of forced migration
Migrante International expresses its fullest and most heartfelt support for the farmers and farm workers of Haciends Luisita in condemning the Cojuangco compromise agreement and calling for the junking of the Stock Distribution Option (SDO).
The compromise agreement is yet another ploy by the Cojuangcos and Hacienda Luisita management to uphold a scheme that has deceived and further forced our farmers and farm-workers to deeper poverty and landlessness.
In the countryside, landlessness is the root cause of poverty that drives our farmers and their families to forced migration. Peasant families are being forced to sell or pawn their lands, carabaos and other properties just to be able to pay for placement fees and other expenses in the hope of finding so-called greener pastures abroad.
Migrante International supports calls to scrap the SDO because, together with other pro-landlord ‘land reform’ programs, it further systematizes the present exploitative and anti-farmer feudal relations in the countryside. The SDO, under the guise of a bogus land reform program, contributes greatly in holding back our economy’s industrial development and progress, thus making our people more and more dependent on the importation of produce and the export of cheap labor.
Migrante International is in solidarity with other sectors of society in calling for a genuine land reform program that upholds land distribution as key to its success and completion.
No to the Cojuangco compromise agreement! Scrap SDO!
Distribute lands to Luisita farmers now!
Fight for genuine land reform and national industrialization!
