SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

More than a dozen farm­ers on 100 Acres Road, who re­ceived death threats from a gang of vi­o­lent men who moved in­to the area a few months ago, are get­ting sup­port from the wider Waller­field farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

The farm­ers had made sev­er­al re­ports about be­ing threat­ened, in­tim­i­dat­ed and as­sault­ed by a group of men who want to il­le­gal­ly take con­trol of agri­cul­tur­al lands leased to them by the State.

Yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a Guardian Me­dia re­port on the sit­u­a­tion, one of the af­fect­ed farm­ers, Paul Abra­ham, said farm­ers from oth­er parts of Waller­field of­fered to pro­vide them with pro­tec­tion when­ev­er they go to their farms to tend to their crops and live­stock.

“It will be safe­ty in num­bers. Go­ing to plant alone is a risk,” Abra­ham said.

Live­stock farmer Wayne Bowen said he had no is­sue with as­sist­ing the af­fect­ed farm­ers but the po­lice need­ed to do their work.

“This thing will on­ly es­ca­late if the po­lice don’t get in­volved. It could turn in­to a war,” he said.

“The way I see it, it’s not about solv­ing crime alone, it’s al­so about crime pre­ven­tion. The po­lice in the coun­try should not wait un­til a crime hap­pens. They can al­so pre­vent it by hav­ing high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty and form­ing part­ner­ships with crime-af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.”

Bowen said when farm­ers gang up to pro­tect them­selves and their lands peo­ple think “we look­ing for vig­i­lante jus­tice.” How­ev­er, he said, they have no choice but to de­fend them­selves.

“If the po­lice can’t pro­tect us then we have to come to­geth­er to pro­tect our­selves. If it comes down to the farm­ers de­fend­ing them­selves I sup­port that. We can’t be sit­ting ducks all the time,” he said.

There are more than 500 farm­ers in Waller­field, one of the coun­try’s food bas­kets.

Last De­cem­ber, Abra­ham had to aban­don his five-acre par­cel of land af­ter he re­ceived death threats. He has videos of the men who are seen bran­dish­ing cut­lass­es and threat­en­ing to kill him. The men up­root­ed Abra­ham’s crops, de­stroyed his an­i­mals’ pens and chopped down fruit trees.

He pro­duced re­ceipts for the re­ports he made at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion last year but said he has not had a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse to his com­plaints.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the farm­ers’ com­plaints, Se­nior Supt Ker­win Fran­cis of the North­ern Di­vi­sion said he has con­tact­ed Abra­ham and will meet with him to­day at 9 am.

“His re­ports are go­ing to be com­plet­ed by way of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ac­tion tak­en based on the ev­i­dence. Fur­ther, it will al­so en­com­pass the bonafide oc­cu­pa­tion of the said lands by all par­ties in­volved by way of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands,” Fran­cis said.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands Bhan­mati Seecha­ran said of­fi­cers from the Mon­i­tor­ing and En­force­ment Unit need po­lice as­sis­tance “to con­duct site vis­its.” She asked to be giv­en un­til Fri­day to pro­vide a re­sponse.