KARAPATAN condemned the Philippine National Police (PNP) for harassing, threatening and driving out some 200 protesting farmers from a camp-out at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in the evening of October 16, 2026.
The farmers were reportedly kicked out of the protest venue on orders of a DENR official and the Quezon City government.
“The protesting farmers threatened by the police with dispersal had come from as far as Bicol, Negros, Nueva Ecija and Bulacan, and included several senior citizens,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay.
“They decried that they were being dispossessed of their land and displaced to give way to ‘development projects.’ Their protest barricades were also being violently demolished, and several peasant leaders and farmers’ rights advocates arrested and detained,” she added.
The farmers had to march at night to the University of the Philippines Student Union Building, where they set up camp temporarily to continue their protest program, which is part of the annual commemoration of Peasant Month. More farmers from other regions are expected to join the camp-out in time for a major rally on October 21, National Peasant Day.
“Harassing, threatening and kicking out farmers peacefully assembled at the DENR is but the latest repressive act intended to suppress the people’s right to protest,” decried Palabay. “In Nueva Vizcaya, Benguet and other areas where farmers and indigenous peoples have been collectively asserting their rights against big mining interests and other elements out to usurp their land and destroy the environment, protests are being suppressed and violence against protesters is escalating.”
“KARAPATAN is in solidarity with the mass of peasants and indigenous people who have been courageously defending their land rights, and will continue to stand firmly with them in asserting their legitimate demands,” concluded Palabay.
