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The present human rights situation in the Philippines worsened under the regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA), beset with the worst economic and political crisis, intensified its political repression and state terrorism against political activist and the people. From 2001 to July 2006, Karapatan (a human rights watchdog), recorded 720 political killings and rampant human rights violations (HRVs), 54% of the victims are peasants.

Because of the major problem of landlessness and the peasants’ unrelenting clamor for land and rural justice, the Philippine government has been implementing bogus agrarian reform programs since the 1930s. In line with the agenda of the United States in the Philippines, most of these programs encouraged modifications in tenancy relations, and resettlement in Mindanao and Palawan where land was still abundant. Such programs had to boost productivity and expand the area planted to export crops that were needed for the US market.

Ironically, it is the World Bank that has put agrarian reform back on the international agenda since the mid-1990s. This development warrants suspicion because it is obviously related to major changes in the global political and economic context. Now the Cold War is over and China has taken the capitalist path, the Bank thinks it can easily take advantage of the popularity of land reform among the world’s poor and launch its own land reform ideology without objections.

The year 2008 bore witness to various peasant struggles in different parts of Asia and the globe, from the rice crisis in the first quarter of the year to the G20 Summit in November. There was also the continuous persecution of peasant leaders. Numerous malicious charges were filed against them, while others became unfortunate victims of extrajudicial killings or enforced disappearances. Violations of peasant rights were also rampant.