Duterte urged to prosecute suspects behind Sagay massacre

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines — Human rights advocates and cause-oriented groups yesterday called on President Duterte to give justice to the nine workers killed in Sagay City last Saturday.

This developed as groups led by the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), labor organizations and human rights groups formed a fact-finding team and commenced their joint investigation on last Saturday’s massacre of nine farmers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental.

The representatives of the fact finding team also called on Duterte to order the conduct of an impartial investigation, free from the involvement of local police, agencies and public officials in Negros island.

Participating in the probe are representatives of the NFSW, human rights group Karapatan, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura, Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, National Union of People’s Lawyers, Promotion for Church People’s Response, National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates-Youth, Gabriela Women’s Party, Gabriela Youth, Salinlahi, Children’s Rehabilitation Center, Kabataan Party-list and Northern Negros Alliance of Human Rights Advocates.

Initial findings of the team showed the nine farmers were gunned down by 10 to 15 armed men suspected to be state agents.

The initial report of the team said 43 members of the local chapter of the NFSW in Hacienda Nene, Barangay Bulanon, Sagay City, participated in a bungkalan, or land cultivation activity. 

Before the bungkalan launch on Oct. 20,  the report said the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) had claimed the NFSW was a legal front of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). The group was supposedly tasked by the communists to grab private agricultural lands through force and coercion.

The report added that bungkalan operations directly threaten the control of landlords over their haciendas.

“Any dispute as to these victims’ rights to the land did not warrant their murders, and the militancy of having farmers take their destinies into their hands by asserting these rights against landlords and warlords never, under any circumstance, justifies a massacre,” the initial report said.

Karapatan, for its part, accused local officials in the province of maintaining private armies to protect their interests.

According to Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay, Sagay Mayor Alfredo Marañon III, Negros Occidental Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr. and their relative Allan Sim-bingco are maintaining private armed groups known as Special Civilian Auxiliary Army (SCAA), composed mainly of paid mercenaries and former members of Revolutionary Proletarian Army (RPA).

Simbingco knew of the farmers’ plan to conduct land cultivation activities in the hacienda, Palabay said.

Palabay also named a landowner she identified as Carmen Tolentino, whom she said should be held accountable for the massacre.

“We also demand that the Philippine National Police (PNP), the AFP and the Marañons stop harassing the relatives of the victims and survivors of the massacre, as well as communities in Sagay in their dangerous efforts to cover up the real perpetrators of the massacre and spin their absurd conspiracies,” Palabay said.

The Marañons earlier accused the NFSW of being a communist front and called on the government to conduct an investigation into their activities that led to the killing of the nine farmworkers last Saturday.  – With Rhodina Villanueva