The Guardian 22 March, 2006
Another Philippine union leader slain
A leader of the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU) at the Cojuangco family-owned sugar estate was shot dead last week in Concepcion town, reports from the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan and the police said.
Tirso Cruz, 33, an ULWU director, was the first leader of the ULWU slain following the resolution of a strike at the estate in December last year, according to Roman Polintan, Bayan chair in Central Luzon.
The union represents more than 5,000 farm workers on whose behalf the government agreed to cancel the stock distribution option (SDO) scheme and transfer to them the ownership of more than 5,000 hectares at the Hacienda Luisita.
Polintan said Cruz was walking home at 12:30am when two men aboard a motorcycle shot him in Barangay Pando in Concepcion, 25 km south of this city.
The slaying took place after the victim, also a barangay kagawad (village council member) of Pando and a local coordinator of the party-list group Anakpawis, left a chapel where a pabasa (Lenten reading of the Passion of Christ) began on Friday.
Rene Galang, ULWU President, said Cruz had been receiving death threats since he joined the Hacienda Luisita strike in November 2004.
Polintan cited the role of Cruz in the campaign of ULWU to seek the pullout of soldiers from 10 villages within the Hacienda Luisita.
Cruz, he said, also led protests against the construction of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway in areas that are tilled for rice and other crops.
Polintan said Bayan’s records showed that 49 political activists were killed while seven others went missing in Central Luzon in 2005.
In the first quarter of 2006, 18 were killed and six were abducted.