by Michelle Wallar, Greengrants Intern
Americans love bananas: banana splits, banana bread, banana smoothies, and just plain bananas. We import about 27 pounds annually for every American, according to Michael Jessen of AlterNet. And yet we often know little about the consequences of the pesticides used to grow bananas. The people who grow our bananas often face exposure to extremely hazardous chemicals, and in places like Kamukhaan, a village on the Philippine island of Mindanao, these people are sometimes kept from the truth.
Dr. Romeo Quijano, a medical doctor and professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of the Philippines, had heard that the people of Kamukhaan were suffering from unusually high rates of disease, and in 1997 he began to document what he believed to be pesticide poisoning. Unfortunately, he had an opinion at odds with the company that grows bananas adjacent to Kamukhaan, the Lapanday Agricultural Development Corporation, or LADECO.
Police arrested Dr. Quijano on September 8, 2003 on charges of criminal libel. The charge sheet included his daughter, Ilang-Ilang Quijano, and four other journalists because of an article published in the Philippine Post three years before. The article linked the severe and unusual health problems of Kamukhaan villagers to LADECO pesticide use.
This is familiar territory for the defendants, as they faced the same charges in 2000. That time the court dismissed the case, deeming the article to be in the public interest. This time, however, the CEO of LADECO’s parent company, Luis “Cito” Lorenzo Jr., is Secretary of the Philippine Department of Agriculture. In this position, Lorenzo is responsible for regulating pesticide use in the country, and there is some indication that the arrest was politically motivated.
In addition to his role as Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Dr. Quijano is president of Pesticide Action Network-Asia Pacific (PAN-AP). Greengrants awarded three grants over the past six years to document the effects of these chemicals in Kamukhaan. Dr. Quijano led the investigation into the local health effects of pesticides used on the plantation, including Paraquat, Mancozeb, Maneb, Carbofuran, Glyphosate and Diazinon, among many others.
The first grant funded a photo documentary of the village. Two years later, Pesticide Action Network Philippines received another grant to organize a citizen-monitoring program. Volunteers in Kamukhaan gathered health data to complement the photo essay.
They found 150 families who appeared to be suffering from effects of pesticides. Dr. Quijano videotaped his interviews with the villagers. When he arrived home he assigned his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ilang-Ilang Quijano, a summer project of writing a story from the taped interviews.
“My dad asked me to do it as something that could occupy my free time during the summer. I was a student then”, Ms. Quijano says. “He knew my interest in journalism and trusted me with the material he so painstakingly gathered.”
She wrote the article with her father’s help and “Poisoned Lives” was published in the Philippine Post on March 6, 2000. The article detailed the unusually high number of people suffering from asthma, thyroid cancer, goiter, diarrhea, dizziness, vomiting, skin conditions and anemia. It also linked these problems to pesticide exposure.
“At the time I was writing it, I wasn’t aware that it would be this controversial,” says Ms. Quijano. “But I was very much moved by the stories people related, and the pictures that showed starkly the effects of poisoning.”
It was Ms. Quijano’s first published work. The story was quickly picked up by other media outlets, including “The Correspondents”, an investigative television program. Ms. Quijano was shocked when in August 2000, a week before her 18th birthday, she and her father and four others were charged for criminal libel, facing fines totaling nearly US$300,000.
According to PAN-AP, criminal libel charges were brought against Dr. Quijano and Ms. Quijano, and also against Philippine Post editors Leti Boniol, Danilo Mariano, Carlos Conde, and Nick Legaspi. LADECO found seven villagers who denied the poisoning allegations and signed a counter-affidavit that LADECO submitted to the court.
Despite the counter-affidavit, the case was dismissed. Dr. Quijano and his daughter continued to study and document the effects of pesticides on the villagers. In 2001, Greengrants awarded PAN-AP a third grant to gather yet more evidence of health problems.
In June 2002, LADECO filed a civil suit that is still pending. In November 2002, Mr. Lorenzo, Chairman & CEO of Lapanday Holdings Corporation, became Secretary of the Philippines Department of Agriculture. Eight months later, the Department of Justice revived the criminal libel charges against the six.
Agriculture Secretary Lorenzo is responsible for national pesticide policy and enforcement, and many question his ability to fulfill his responsibilities. On September 19, 2003, Senator Aquillo Pimentel Jr. publicly urged Lorenzo to look into the issues raised by Dr. Quijano’s investigations. Pimentel also recommended that Lorenzo read a report of a recent fact-finding mission to Kamukhaan. The report confirmed Dr. Quijano’s initial findings.
The Quijanos are pleased that Pimentel came to their defense, but Ilang-Ilang Quijano emphasizes the importance of gaining international support. “It would jolt the First World to know that the perfect-looking fruits in their market were produced at the expense of people’s lives in the Third World,” she said. “And if this is a truly globalized world, then it is not only us here who should act on this injustice.”
She adds that victory in this case must go beyond her own exoneration:
“This cause has the potential of winning. And I don’t only mean the junking of the libel and civil case. I’m talking of the potential of the villagers to rise up and sue the company responsible for destroying their health and environment. If that happens, it will be a landmark case to prove all over the world many things. It would show that the use of pesticides adversely affects people and the environment, that companies can’t always get away with their irresponsibility in the use of these chemicals, that the people can stand up for themselves and demand their right to live free from sickness, poverty, and threat.”