Manila, Philippines\u2014On the morning of February 3, Romeo \u201cRommy\u201d Torres headed to his farm carrying sacks that he usually fills with a harvest of bananas. Rommy sells his produce either by the roadside, or in agroecology markets organised by his association of small farmers. They grow local crops and don\u2019t use chemical inputs. But for the past year, farming had become nearly impossible.<\/p>\n
The 75-hectare land that once was a thriving farming community has now been fenced off by Royal Moluccan Realty Holdings, Inc. (RMRHI), a real estate company with whom the farmers have been locked in fierce struggle since 2007. By the end of 2019, after several farmers\u2019 houses were burned<\/a> and farmers were repeatedly shot at by roving armed goons, all remaining families were ultimately forced to vacate the fertile land located in Sitio Compra, San Mateo village, Norzagaray town, Bulacan province (55 kilometers north of Manila).<\/p>\n Some farmers looked for jobs and others became farmworkers in someone else\u2019s land. But Rommy was among the few who continued to go inside the forbidden land to farm. \u201cIt was not just a matter of him simply going back to harvest his produce. It was his own way of asserting the right to land,\u201d said Marco, an organiser for the Peasant Movement of the Philippines (KMP).<\/p>\n On February 5, two days after being last seen by neighbours heading beyond the fences erected by the company, Rommy was found dead and stuffed inside a plastic drum<\/a> abandoned by a creek in Laguna province, more than 100 kilometers from his home. He was hogtied and had gunshot wounds in the mouth, chest, and back, according to local police.<\/p>\n It was a closed casket wake\u2014the body was already in an advanced state of decomposition when it was found. \u201cI couldn\u2019t bear to look at the photos. We were only able to identify him by his moustache and the red shirt he wore,\u201d said Jovita Torres, Rommy\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n Before the murder, RMRHI had already ramped up its harassment of farmers. On January 18, Salvacion Abonilla, John Jason Abonilla, Jenny Capa, Marilyn Olpos, Catherine Magdato, and Eden Gualberto were arrested. They are among the 14 farmers whom the company charged with theft last January 2020. But KMP insists that the charges are ludicrous<\/a>, as there can be no theft involved in \u201csimply picking fruits from trees they themselves planted.\u201d<\/p>\n The farmers\u2019 group nonetheless had to scrape together enough resources to bail out the farmers who were arrested, as well as those with pending warrants\u2014which includes Jovita. In fact, she had to go to the city hall to post bail the morning of her husband\u2019s wake.<\/p>\n