The Department of Agrarian Reform must also come up with a policy on untitled agricultural lands to define its limitation and parameters on the recognition of land claimants as landlords to once and for all, address this problem. 

A more repulsive situation involves two (2) elderly persons, aged 70 years old and above who were arrested and detained by the police by virtue of a warrant issued by the court for alleged qualified theft. The subject of the alleged theft was lumber, flitches of them which can not be carried conscionably by the septuagenarian spouses. More than this morbid incident is the fact that the aged spouses charged for the alleged crime were the owners of the land with a free patent title but in the normal procedure, the police would only say, “get a lawyer to defend you” but first, the accused have to be in jail. 

But when the aged spouses appeared before the judge after their arrest, the municipal circuit trial court judge in Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur immediately ordered the dismissal of the case against the aged spouses perhaps on the basis of their state of health and age and the patent improbability to carry out the alleged offense attributed to them. 

But power and money have to be resorted to by the complainant who succeeded to have the case re-filed against the aged spouses. And as a consequence, they were re-arrested and incarcerated in the municipal jail of Mahayag, Zamboanga del Sur for a week until their bail bond was posted for their temporary liberty even with the explicit provision in the Revised Penal Code. 

The case dragged on until a relocation survey was resorted to by the private prosecutor and the defense counsel. After about four (4) years of anguish, waiting for the verdict, the case was dismissed when the relocation survey disclosed the findings that the lumber allegedly taken and sold by the accused were not taken from the complainant’s land, and therefore, he has no personality to file the instant case. The motion of the defense counsel, Atty. Ruben N. Bance to dismiss the case was granted by the Court only on March 2, 2007 or after four (4) years or more. 

But this is not the end of their calvary. Their accuser has a son-in-law who is an officer of the Philippine Army. His name has terrorized the family with unidentified armed persons “visiting” them frequently at nighttime, warning them that they will be killed if they do not vacate the land. After losing the case, the accuser hired men to cut the coconut trees in the spouses’ land and sold them, exercising his alleged right of ownership with the police and barangay officials “officiating” the injustice being done to the poor aged spouses. In a desperate effort to survive, the aged spouses vanished without anyone knowing where they are. 

A woman tribal chieftain of the Subanen tribe who was active in helping her constituents, guiding them to offices where they can seek assistance was murdered right in her own house in Campo V, Ramon Magsaysay, Zamboanga del Sur on January 16, 2006. Her killer is still at-large but the tribal community suspects that a powerful DAR official has something to do with the crime. Before her death, she stood as witness against the DAR official for alleged landgrabbing and continually asked her people not to be afraid but stand up to the truth. Bae Emily Mucay even stood in behalf of one farmer who finally gave up his farmland because of the threats against his person allegedly by the DAR official. The farmer reportedly transferred to the Visayas for dear life and the woman tribal chieftain took his place in an effort to get the disputed farmland back for her people. But an assassin took her life. Todate, nobody would dare investigate the killing. 

Last update : 22-08-2007 15:41

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