Government authorities vowed on Monday to undertake a thorough investigation into the “massacre” of nine sugar plantation workers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, even as Malacañang announced President Duterte himself will visit the fatalities’ wake on Tuesday.
National Police (PNP) chief Director General Oscar D. Albayalde, at a news conference in Camp Crame, assured justice will be served to the families of the fatalities who are members of the Negros Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) reportedly slain by about 40 armed men on Saturday at Hacienda Nene, Purok Firetree, Barangay Bulanon.
“The Philippine National Police condemns, in the strongest sense, this despicable attack on poor peasants, even as we vow to mobilize all available resources to ensure that those responsible are held accountable for their crime and justice is served to the victims and their families,” he said.
The PNP chief said pursuit operations by military and police units have been launched since Saturday, while a Special Investigation Task Group has been formed to look deeper into the incident.
Albayalde said that, while the PNP suspects the participation of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the carnage, being a part of its “Oplan Bungkalan at Okupasyon,” a grand design to “occupy private and government property using their mass base and to create untoward incident then blame it on the government,” the probe will cover all angles.
“I have directed that all angles should be explored in their investigation and to gather solid pieces of evidence that will support an airtight case, which should be filed in our courts as soon as possible,” Albayalde said.
Chief Supt. John Bulalacao, regional director of the Police Regional Office 6, said the task force is looking at three angles on the massacre, and these are directed against the NPA, the landowner and a group of militiamen in the area.
Bulalacao said that investigators were also probing officials of the NFSW who transported the nine victims, which included two minors, to the hacienda two days before the incident.
The human-rights group Karapatan has asked the Commission on Human Rights to investigate the massacre, which it also condemned through a statement issued by its secretary-general, Cristina Palabay.
“We call on the Commission on Human Rights to conduct an independent and thorough investigation on the massacre. We are one with the kin of the victims in the Sagay massacre in their call for justice,” said Palabay.
Agrarian Reform Secretary John R. Castriciones, for his part, said the massacre took place in illegally occupied portions of the hacienda. He added that the fatalities are not listed land-reform beneficiaries and that the land they occupied is not covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
The Department of Agrarian Reform chief said he will form a task force comprising of representatives from the DAR and the CARP-implementing agencies and will be calling for an emergency meeting of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council in light of the bloody carnage.
“I strongly condemn the killing of nine sugarcane workers in Hacienda Nene in Sagay City, Negros Occidental,” Castriciones said.
“Whatever the reasons may be, investigation shows that the CPP-NPA [Communist Party of the Philippine-New People’s Army] are the ones behind the massacre,” Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo said in a radio interview on Monday.
But for former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, a Negrense, who has also condemned the massacre, those who should be held responsible for the attack are none other than the Duterte administration and the military.
Colmenares noted the military had earlier alleged that the land-cultivation areas being maintained by agricultural sugar workers and farmers in Negros Island are in fact NPA rebels’ communal farms.
“That is really absurd because the issue of land is a legitimate issue. This is an attempt of the Duterte government to quell any form of protest by criminalizing legitimate demands. As NFSW has repeatedly pointed out, the goal of setting up land-cultivation areas is to ward off the inevitable hunger brought by the Tiempo Muerto [dead season in the sugar industry] by planting on properties vegetable, corn and root crops on undistributed and idle lands to feed their families,” he said in a news statement. “We demand an immediate impartial probe on this massacre, and we will not stop until justice has been served.”