Rights abuses in PH not ‘limited’ to drug war — HRW

Conde noted that the victims were members of the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFWS), “who joined the first day of a bungkalan, a land ocupation protest on part of the plantation.” (File photo: National Federation of Sugar Workers/Facebook)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday, October 23, said human rights abuses in the Philippines are no longer limited to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, following the killing of nine sugarcane workers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental last Saturday.

The HRW, through its researcher Carlos Conde,  urged the Philippine government to launch an investigation and appropriately prosecute the perpetrators behind the massacre of the nine victims, including two minors, who were just resting at their tents in Hacienda Nene in Barangay Bulanon, Sagay City when 40 armed men reportedly shot them.

Conde noted that the victims were members of the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFWS), “who joined the first day of a bungkalan, a land ocupation protest on part of the plantation.”

“Considerable international attention has rightly focused on the unending extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. But the Sagay Massacre highlights the fact that serious rights abuses in the Philippines are not limited to the drug war,” Conde said.

He stressed that agrarian violence is not new in the country, citing the 1985 massacre in Escalante, Negros Occidental, where 20 peasants and activists were killed when policemen and the military opened fire at a protest march.

Peasants, sugar workers, and labor activists, he noted, have also been targeted by security forces in Negros, accusing them of being members of the New People’s Army (NPA).

“Agrarian violence is not uncommon in the Philippines, which is still grappling with the landlessness that has been blamed for massive poverty that in turn has fueled a half-century-long communist insurgency,” Conde said.

Malacañang and several senators had condemned the killing of the nine sugar farmers.

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the Philippine National Police (PNP) has already been instructed to conduct a “thorough and impartial investigation on this dastardly act.”

For its part, Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said it already sent a fact-finding team through its Region 6 sub-office in Bacolod City to probe the said incident.