Global Greengrants Fund joins with our partners at The Samdhana Institute in mourning the loss of Renato Penas (Ka Rene), a national leader for landless farmers’ rights in the Philippines and Vice President of Pambansang Kilusan ng mga Samahang Magsasaka (PAKISAMA), a 2007 Greengrants/Samdhana grantee. Ka Rene was assassinated on Friday night, the third brutal murder of this group’s leadership in seven months.
A participant in a 1997 28-day hunger strike for land and a practitioner of active non-violence, Ka Rene rose to be one of the most prominent PAKISAMA leaders during their struggles for reform and extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) that aims to resettle landless farmers on productive agricultural land. As a trained community organizer, in 2007 he led an unprecedented 1,700-kilometer walk of 55 farmers from Sumilao to Malacanang to make their claim over a 144-hectare ancestral land covered by the CARP. The march was supported, in part, by a small grant from Greengrants and Samdhana. During the past two months, Ka Rene was leading farmer groups in a coalition campaign to push Congress to enact the extension and reform of CARP.