THE OCT. 20 heinous massacre of nine hungry, landless sugar workers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental highlights the urgent need for an impartial probe.
The farmers were defenseless. Gunmen attacked as they were resting after tilling portions of Hacenda Nene. After a barrage of bullets, the assailants doused gasoline on their victims and set fire to their bodies.
The farmers had claim on the land. They were mostly dumaan, old field hands. Some had worked in the same plantation since childhood. Their decision to cultivate a portion of Hacenda Nene post-harvest stemmed from an ugly surprise sprung by the Department of Agrarian Reform: the notice of coverage issued in 2014 had been rescinded. The reason — the “donation” of the land to 25 individuals handpicked by the plantation owners — is a classic scheme to evade agrarian reform coverage.
This led to old hands losing their jobs. The 75-hectare plantation was then leased to a corporation. To keep on earning, former regular workers had to accept the unusually cruel contractual system that is the norm in Philippine sugarlandia.
The bungkalan in Hacenda Nene was as much a matter of survival as it was an assertion of right. Workers who earn from P300 to P700 a week for backbreaking labor have nothing during tiempo muerto, the dead season between harvest and the planting of new crop.
Hacieda Nene workers had negotiated to plant vegetables and other staples for their families in the coming lean months. Their harvest, however, was death.
Sadly, their cries for justice met with vilification and spin from the government. Officials first tried to blame the victims. They echoed the trite Armed Forces claim that the bungkalan provides food and logistics to the New People’s Army. In Negros, a land of stark economic and social contrasts, that reasoning is a throwback to the rationalization of oppression under the old dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
Then the government tried to tag the NPA in the attack itself. The mockery that greeted this was fully earned. After spinning one tall tale after another to justify their “Red October” crackdown, the government can no longer distinguish between truth and fantasy.
Independent legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate must probe the Sagay 9 Massacre. The Commission on Human Rights must also work closely with people’s organizations in tapping independent experts.
The blood on the hands of the massacre perpetrators will not wash off easily. All Filipinos must work together to ensure genuine justice for the Sagay 9 and push for real changes that address hunger, landlessness and repression.
