CATARMAN, Northern Samar—Yolanda survivors in Leyte and Northern Samar staged a barricade in Tacloban City to condemn what is becoming known as the Kidapawan Massacre, showing solidarity with the farmers equally hit by disaster and neglected by the government.
Hundreds of students and teachers in Samar and Leyte islands staged simultaneous protest actions in Catarman’s University of Eastern Philippines and Tacloban’s University of the Philippines campus. In their black protest shirts, they walked out of school campuses and echoed the call “bigas, hindi bala (rice, not bullets).”
The protesters slammed the continuing human rights violations initiated by the local government of Kidapawan, Cotabato Gov. Lala Mendoza, the Philippine National Police and national government under Aquino.
The violence that erupted on April 1 resulted in the death of more than three farmers after police fired on farmers who had only been asking for immediate food aid.
Kabataan Party-list-Eastern Visayas said that the protest is a prelude to a bigger global protest on Friday, April 8.
Youth organizations under Kabataan Party-list, Pulso Han Mag-aaram, College Editors Guild of the Philippines Samar Island and Greater Leyte Formations, League of Filipino Students, Gabriela Youth, local Alpha Phi Omega and Tau Gamma Phi chapters and LGBT groups vow to make the government accountable for these human rights violations.
The youth-led protest also demanded that the Aquino administration to stop killings and heed the call of calamity victims nationwide.