As the spokesperson of Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP) in Southern Mindanao, Pojas was concerned over the plight of these Lumad farmers, still struggling for their ancestral land but ended up being displaced.
By GRACE S. UDDIN | Davao Today
Davao City– On that early morning of May 15 this year, Celso Pojas, 45, was sipping a cup of coffee inside the Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP) office in Bugac, Maa when he got up, told a colleague he had to buy few cigarette sticks and went outside.
Nobody had an inkling it was to be their last time to talk to him.
As the secretary- general of Farmers’s Association of Davao City (FADC), Pojas was preparing to go to Compostela town as part of the support groups to attend to hundreds of Lumads, who were fleeing their homes in Monkayo and Compostela because of military operations there.
Pojas learned they were housed inside a gym and he was increasingly worried because he received reports the previous night that the evacuees were becoming uncomfortable with the presence of armed soldiers at the evacuation site.
As the spokesperson of Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP) in Southern Mindanao, Pojas was concerned over the plight of these Lumad farmers, still struggling for their ancestral land but ended up being displaced.
He was supposed to stay in Compostela for the duration of the evacuation and aside from his organizing work with farmers there, he was also assigned to cook food and to negotiate with soldiers who often visited the gym.
But only minutes after he got out of the office, his colleagues heard four gunshots, looked out and found his body sprawled just outside the gate.
As the first political activist killed in Davao city since President Arroyo assumed power, Pojas’s death alarmed militant group leaders, who used to view Davao city as a “safer” place for activists amidst the climate of political killings prevailing in the whole country.
Some of them, Bayan secretary-general for Southern Mindanao Jeppie Ramada, for instance, noticed being spooked around.
Days after Pojas’s death, Ramada noticed a person acting crazy, weeding an idle lot next to his house. Strange cars were also seen parking outside the offices of militant groups.
Since October last year, Pojas has been receiving death threats, the latest of which occurred during the transport strike organized only two days before his death.
Edil Gonzaga, spokesperson of the transport group Transmision-Piston, recalled how Pojas already felt being followed around during the transport strike that colleagues saw to it that they never broke away from him.
KMP was about to move to another office even before Pojas’s death but concerns about what happened in Compostela diverted their attention.
Pedro Arnado, vice-chairperson of KMP- SMR said that farmers agitating for land reform have mostly become the targets of extrajudicial killings in the country. Of the 903 political activists killed in the country since Arroyo assumed power, majority were farmers.
It was Friday, May 23, when Pojas was laid down to his final rest. For the first time since the 1980, people gathered at Davao’s Freedom Park, and paraded the casket of the slain peasant leader along the streets of Davao, reminiscent of the funeral march during the time of Martial Law.
Farmers coming all the way from Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte and Davao Oriental marched with Pojas’s family and friends from Freedom Park to the Davao Memorial Park, passing through the streets of F. Torres, Araullo, Quirino, Claveria and Ponciano.
“He was five years old when I brought them to Davao because I did not want them to be away from me,” said his father Felix Pojas, now 75 years old. Pojas’s mother died when he and his sibling were young.
Poverty prevented him from going to college after he finished high school. When his father remarried, Pojas helped support the family. His siblings remember him as the brother who sacrificed his life to become the breadwinner of the family.
He used to work for the Lapanday banana plantation but after seven years, he was fired when he joined the workers’ demand for increase in wages. Then, he worked as a canal surveyor in a banana packing house in Cabaguio, where he was also terminated after joining calls demanding insurance benefits from the company.
In 1991, he started joining a farmers’s group known as the United Farmers of Fatima (UFF).
Back to his farm, he was awakened to the conditions of peasants and started joining farmer’s groups. He was active in the struggle for genuine land reform to break off the chain of land monopoly from the hands of few big landlords and big capital. He joined the Mandug Farmers’ Association (Mafa) in 2001, an affiliate of FADC and two years after, became a council member of FADC.
Pojas’s father is a farmer beneficiary of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in Fatima, Mandug. Despite the government’s touted claim to distribute land to the farmers, the land that was supposed to be for him under CARP was still difficult to obtain because the family had a hard time paying for the amortization fee.
Joel Virador, Bayan Muna national vice chairperson, said that the tragedy that happened to Pojas could usually drive people to desperation. “That’s why, some people opt to support armed struggle, because their demand for genuine agrarian reform and food for their families are oftentimes met with bullets,” Virador said during the Freedom Park rally.
Filled with grief over his passing, fellow activists said they were not cowed by what happened and pledged to continue his fight. “It is very clear for us who killed Celso Pojas,” Kelly Delgado said.
“We raise our fist to hail him the peasants’s hero,” said Gonzaga.
Danilo Ramos, the KMP national secretary- general who read a poem on the last night of Pojas’ wake, said that for every grain of rice that Pojas fought for, was life not only for farmers but also for the Filipino people.
“He lived such a deep and meaningful life,” Ramos said. (Grace S. Uddin/ davaotoday.com)
Comrades light candles as a symbolic way of saying that with a light of one torch, hundreds, thousands will follow the step of Pojas. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
CULPRIT. Danilo Ramos, KMP National Secretary- General holds a portrait of President Arroyo. According to him, hundreds had been killed under the administration’s Oplan Bantay Laya II. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
Members and leaders of progressive organizations sign the KMP flag with their names to pledge their unceasing commitment in serving the people. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
A FATHER’S GRIEF. Felix Pojas laments over the death of his eldest child. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
His death is heavy on the hearts of the farmers, his friends, comrades and family. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
FUNERAL MARCH. Colleagues want to show to the people of Davao City what the Arroyo regime and the military have done. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
JUSTICE! For slain peasant mass leader Celso Pojas. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
FAREWELL peasant hero. (davaotoday.com photo by Jonald Mahinay)
August 9, 2008 at 1:55 am |
hindi madadaan ang politika sa paporma2 lang, hindi na ba matatapos ang paggamit ng armas laban sa mga taong tunay na nagtatanggol sa bayan. Hanggang kailan ba mananatili ang sistemang pyudal sa sa Pilipnas. Gibain ang bulok na sistema!! labanan ang pasismo!!