Inside the tents there are hammocks, boxes of groceries and cooking vessels, presenting a tranquillity that belies the urgent appeals on banners demanding land for peasants, and an end to the killing of farmers on the island of Mindanao.

Peasant farmers and leaders in the camp say they want genuine reform, as the government's agrarian reform programme, known as CARP and enacted in 1988, has failed.

"Thirty years after the law was passed, land has not been given to peasant farmers who have tilled the land for generations," said Lito Lao, chairperson of the agricultural workers' union in Mindanao, known by its Tagalog acronym UMA.

"Instead, farmers are getting killed for demanding their right to land, and dummy beneficiaries have been settled by landlords on land meant for the landless," he said.

CARP, signed into law by then president Corazon Aquino, was initially set for 10 years, with an aim to distribute about 7.8 million hectares of land - roughly the size of Portugal - to reduce inequality and help alleviate poverty.

In 1998, the programme was extended by another 10 years. In 2009, Gloria Arroyo, who was president, unveiled CARPER, adding an Extension with Reforms to CARP and a deadline of 2014.

Of a total area of 5.4 million hectares that fell under CARP's scope, the government has distributed 4.8 million hectares as of December 2017, according to a spokesman for the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

Activists say officials accepted thousands of fraudulent claims, and that about 44 percent of land distributed is public, requiring farmers pay to an amortisation fee they say is excessive.

REUTERS