Luisita workers, other rallyists arrested in Mendiola for ‘obstruction’

At least 40 protesters, including workers from Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, were arrested on Saturday afternoon after their demonstration was dispersed at the Chino Roces Bridge in Manila, police said. The protesters were dispersed and arrested following complaints from schools in the area, which will be used as testing areas for the nursing board exam, PO2 Domingo Ligutan of the Manila Police District (MPD) Station 8 said. The Chino Roces Bridge, also called the Mendiola bridge, is the main approach to Malacañang as well as to nearby colleges. The workers and activists, who were directing their long-standing demand of genuine land reform to President Benigno “Noynoy" Aquino, were brought to the MPD headquarters on Taft Avenue in Manila, where they will be charged with obstruction, according to Ligutan. PO3 James Poso of the MPD headquarters meanwhile said that the protesters are currently at the Ospital ng Maynila for medical examination to determine if any one of them were hurt. Party-list group Anakpawis, however, condemned the arrest of the protesters, saying they became “the first casualties of the Aquino administration." The militant farmers' group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas clarified that it had staged a camp-out near Malacañang to press the newly-installed Aquino administration to take immediate steps on the long-standing issue of genuine land reform. Aquino’s family controls the 6,453-hectare Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, whose lands have yet to be subjected to agrarian reform and distributed to its agricultural workers. The Mendiola bridge, often the setting of confrontations between rallyists and police during past administrations, is also the site of a massacre of farmer-demonstrators in 1987 during the presidency of Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the current president’s mother.—JV, GMANews.TV