What was praised by Mayor Rey Ruiz as “a shining light from the sky,” the Php2 billion palm oil plantation project of Hacienda Asia Plantation, Inc. (HAPI), owned by the Consunji group, has instead been dark and ominously forbidding as HAPI have started bulldozing the uplands of Candoni, Negros Occidental along with the lives of the communities who dwell there.
HAPI was granted an Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) by the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR), giving it rights to manage over 6,652 hectares of land in Candoni. DENR described these as “idle” public lands, but the area in fact spans barangays, forests, farmlands and ancestral domains long tilled and cared for by farming communities and the Ati Indigenous group. The project’s conversion of the land into a monocrop palm oil plantation threatens to displace more than 300 farming households and Indigenous families who have cultivated and protected the land for years.
In June 2025, HAPI faced backlash for failing to secure an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) and for violating environmental regulations. These violations resulted in the temporary suspension of its earth-moving activities by the local government unit of Candoni and a formal Cease and Desist Order (CDO) from the Environmental Management Bureau of Region VI. By then, however, HAPI had already bulldozed as much as 4,000 hectares of land between 2023 to June 2025, around 60% of their target 6,652 hectares. Local groups have reported that HAPI’s planting continued despite these orders.
On top of heartless land grabbing, efforts to stifle collective resistance against the project have intensified. Cases of intimidation and harassment targeting community organizers and development workers in Candoni show a stark reality that accompanies community assertion of land.
In January 2026, Paghida-et sa Kauswagan Development Group (PDG) worker Joselito Macapobre narrowly escaped an abduction attempt involving elements of the 15th Infantry Battalion. He managed to break free after being forcibly pushed into a van by three armed personnel. After a few weeks, he received a threatening text message warning that Atty. Rey Gorgonio would be harmed if he continued assisting farmers. Like Macapobre, Atty. Gorgonio has been providing legal assistance to peasants and marginalized sectors. He took over the cases of Atty. Benjamin Ramos, former executive director of PDG, who was killed in 2018 by suspected military personnel. Atty. Gorgonio continues to represent farmers, peasants, and political prisoners despite persistent threats.
Several PDG members have also faced fabricated charges of financing terrorism and have experienced coercion by military elements to red-tag and vilify their organization. The laws most often weaponized in these attacks, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (Republic Act No. 11479) and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10168), have been tactically and repeatedly used to target human rights defenders and civil society organizations providing legitimate services to communities and promoting human rights. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPS) serve as another form of legal action to silence criticism and resistance. In Dupax del Norte, Woggle Mining Corporation has utilized SLAPPS against environmental defenders and local residents opposing its operations.
These actions are used to discourage participation and suppress criticism. Threats, harassment, and legal persecution aim to dismantle community organizing precisely because it poses a challenge to corporate encroachment such as HAPI’s land grabbing. The harassment of PDG and the people of Dupax del Norte is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern in which the welfare of affected communities are sidelined in favor of corporate interests in land-use decisions.
At its core, the struggle for land is not merely about procedural compliance by government agencies but about concrete impact on communities and ecosystems. HAPI’s venture into palm oil is framed as part of the renewable energy value chain, in line with policies under the Marcos Jr. administration that have opened the renewable energy sector to 100% foreign ownership. Similar to Woggle’s mining operations in Dupax del Norte, HAPI’s plantation threatens to exhaust Candoni’s natural resources while channeling profits to foreign investors rather than to the local communities who depend on the land to survive.
Farmers and Indigenous Peoples are forced to surrender their lands, abandon their homes and livelihood, and endure harassment when they resist. Large-scale palm oil plantations bring well-documented environmental risks: forest and biodiversity loss, contamination of water sources, soil degradation, and heightened vulnerability to erosion and flooding. The irreversible ecological damage and deepening rural poverty that accompany these projects are systematically ignored.
For the government, a Php 2 billion palm oil plantation may appear as a “shining light from the sky.” For farmers and Indigenous communities of Candoni, it is a looming catastrophe. HAPI’s land-grabbing project, which masquerade as a “blessing,” only succeed in blinding officials with greed; they do not hide the blood-drenched reality–one where corporate interests advance at the expense of people’s rights, livelihoods, and the environment.
Residents, farmers, and Indigenous groups demand an end to land grabbing. They call on the government to recognize their right to land and the rehabilitation of the damaged forests and agricultural lands in Candoni. Furthermore, they call on the revocation of HAPI’s IFMA by the DENR to permanently halt operations and urge the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to investigate state forces’ involvement in the eviction of farmers and Indigenous people, as well as for inflicting harm and intimidation among civil society members.
They affirm support for the passage of the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB), a legislation to solidify their right to land and the repeal of weaponized counter-terrorism laws, Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (Republic Act No. 11479) and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10168).
Read also:
- Hands off NUPL Negros Chairperson Atty, Rey Gorgonio and PDG development workers! – https://nupl.net/hands-off-nupl-negros-chairperson-atty-rey-gorgonio-and-pdg-development-workers-nupl/
- Land under siege: The oil palm threat in Candoni – https://www.facebook.com/share/p/183pR3B2db/
- Int’l mission urges cancellation of HAPI Inc’s IFMA, links palm oil expansion to climate injustice and militarization in Candoni, Negros – https://tinyurl.com/3ffzptz2