Who is Pedro Tejino?
For over a year now, Pedro Tejino and a number of his cohorts have been taking refuge at the offices of Akbayan and Peace Foundation Inc. in Metro Manila. Akbayan has also been spreading the word that these people are peasant leaders of theirs who are being hunted by the New People's Army.
Who is Pedro Tejino? Is he really a peasant leader as Akbayan has been claiming?
The truth is that Pedro Tejino is an armed element and leader of a paramilitary group in San Narciso, Quezon. The paramilitary group in question operates under the auspices of the 74th IB based in Catanauan, Quezon. It passes itself off as a "peasant association" affiliated with the Akbayan-Peace Foundation Inc. and is involved in landgrabbing and other criminal and antisocial activities such as carabao-rustling.
It is Pedro Tejino's armed group that was behind the April 2004 murder of Pedro's own brother Paulo Tejino. Pedro's group had earlier expelled Paulo because of his firm opposition to the "association"'s activities.
Tejino's armed group has been unleashing violence against peasants struggling for genuine land reform in Far South Quezon. It comprises one component in the 74th IB and the 416th PNP Mobile Group's fascist campaign to destroy peasant mass organizations.
Pedro Tejino's group has been threatening peasants struggling for genuine land reform and forcing them to join a group allied with the reformist Akbayan-Peace Foundation Inc. which supports the reactionary government's sham Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
The peasant masses are deeply angered at Pedro Tejino. The fact that Akbayan claims Pedro Tejino as one of its leaders only further exposes its antipeasant and antipeople activities. It also bares Akbayan's collusion with paramilitary armed groups that serve as the AFP's partners in the counterrevolutionary war.
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