Militant farmers from the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) launched a picket-dialogue in front of the Department of Agriculture head office saying that the World Trade Organization has legalized smuggling in the Philippines. This is one of the highlights of the People’s Caravan 2004 Philippine-leg with participants from RESIST, PAN-AP and a lot of other organizations. According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of the group “ last year alone more than $10 billon or P525 billion worth of imported products were smuggled into the country. Also 2,517 or 99.5 % of the confiscated container vans of the Bureau of Customs were lost. This is through the enormous clout of politicians in the smuggling business and the WTO serves as a cover for their dastardly deeds. It is due to this organization that farmers are on a losing battle against the influx of foreign agricultural products which comes in our country either legally or illegally,”

“A concrete example of the deluge of products is in the rice sector where for this year more than 810,000-950,000 metric tons of rice is to be imported. This would amount to about P1.3 billion, it is ironic though that our farmers can produce almost the needed rice and we really do not need to import. Now we are also importing genetically-modified organisms (GMO’s) like Bt corn and Bb rice, that are dangerous to our health,” added Ramos. 

The protest also went to the US Embassy to denounce the continued intervention of the United States and its trans-national corporations in the affairs of our country. 
According to Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of KMP, “the US government is as accountable as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the fiscal crisis that we are experiencing because they are the ones who tied us to onerous and lopsided treaties that have kept us underdeveloped and a neo-colony of the US,”

“It is high time that they stop their interventionist policies in our economy, politics and military. They should mind their own country and not act as a worldwide hypocritical policeman, who violates all the laws and treaties they have signed. They have reduced our country as nothing more than a source of cheap and docile labor, a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for their surplus products. This is our yoke and we must struggle harder to prevail over it,” Ala concluded. # # #
 

KMP - 16 September 2005