Philippine President Gloria Arroyo yesterday ordered the replacement of soldiers and police guarding a farm controlled by the family of former president Corazon Aquino after deadly riots involving striking workers claimed as many as seven lives.
National police said four protesters were killed and 16 others, including three policemen, were injured when demonstrators protesting job cuts clashed with riot police outside the gates of the Hacienda Luisita near the northern city of Tarlac on Tuesday.
However, union officials said seven people were killed and 30 injured.
Arroyo said she was "deeply saddened over the violent clashes," and appealed for "prudence and sobriety on both sides." She avoided blaming anyone for the bloodshed.
Police and soldiers involved in the riot would be rotated out and replaced with a fresh contingent that would exercise "maximum tolerance", she said in a statement.
The workers on the 6,000hectare estate launched a strike after more than 300 farmhands were laid off and separate negotiations between the management and the sugar mill union broke down.
The strikers refused a government order to return to work, the labor department said. The stand-off turned into a pitched battle on Tuesday when soldiers and police arrived to enforce the labor department's "return to work" order.
cooling off
Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas said the strike had been illegal as the union had not complied with a required "cooling off" period.
Arroyo said government agencies would extend burial and hospital assistance to the casualties. She urged the management and strikers to settle the dispute in "a peaceful and rational manner."
Jose Romero, a director of the striking United Luisita Workers union, said the dead included two children who choked on the tear gas fired by the riot police.
Residents who sympathized with the strike had brought their children to the picketline, he said.
National police chief Director-General Edgardo Aglipay ordered a "thorough investigation" of the rioting at Hacienda Luisita, a corporate farm controlled by the Cojuangco family, which includes ex-president Corazon Aquino.
Romero accused the riot police of starting the violence, saying "they were shooting at us, using automatic fire."
Romero said that he was hit and kicked by riot police while ducking to avoid gunfire.
Jose Cojuangco, brother of former president Aquino and head of the Cojuangco family, said his sister Corazon Aquino did not have a say in the management of the company.
Many of those laid off had accepted their retirement pay and only about 80 workers were actually taking part in the strike. Their ranks had been swelled by outsiders brought in by militant labor groups, Cojuangco charged.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema