On 14 November, 2020, Armando Buisan, coconut farmers leader and community-based defender, was shot dead by unknown assailants after receiving harassment for years in Catanauan, the Philippines.

Buisan was a copra farmer and a resident of sitio Luyahan, barangay Magsaysay, General Luna, Quezon. He had fought for the rights of coconut farmers in the community for almost three decades and was a well-known leader.

In 2019, the military presented him alongside 39 others as a “rebel surrenderee” in a staged ceremony in General Luna .

“The farmers’ call for higher prices of copra and lukad (coconut meat) and for aid, in this time of successive storms and a pandemic, were met with summary killings from the state and the military,” said Orly Marcellana, secretary-general of the regional farmers’ organisation Katipunan ng Samahan ng Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (KASAMA-TK).

General Luna is part of the Bondoc Peninsula in Quezon. Three successive storms, Typhoon Quinta, Supertyphoon Rolly and Typhoon Ulysses, hit the area in the space of one month and caused widespread devastation and flooding.

Reports from progressive organisations, Anakbayan Quezon and Karapatan Quezon, state that police and military units, particularly the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ 85th Infantry Battalion, remain active in harassing farmers and accusing them of being members of the New People’s Army.