BACOLOD City – The Apolinario Gatmaitan Command of the New People’s Army (NPA) denied any involvement in the attack that led to the death of nine sugar farmers in Hacienda Nene, Barangay Bulanon, Sagay City, Negros Occidental.
The NPA command based in Negros Island turned the blame to its rival rebel group Revolutionary Proletarian Army (RPA).
It added that the RPA was in cahoots with the Philippine Army, Sagay City police and landlords in Sagay.
“The people are more than aware that the NPA is mainly a peasant army waging agrarian revolution to address the fundamental problem of landlessness and various other forms of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation prevailing in the vast Philippine countryside,” said NPA spokesman Ka Juanito Magbanua.
He added that they condemn in “strongest terms” the massacre of the sugar farmers now called the “Sagay 9.”
Magbanua said the massacre was the “single most brutal incident of peasant killings under the Duterte regime thus far.”
The NPA spokesman also said the “series of heinous lies” about the massacre were meant to “discredit” them.
It was also meant to “exonerate the landlords and their goons.”
Armed men gunned the farmers down while they were resting in their makeshift shanty around 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 20.
Sagay City police said three of the sugar workers who tried to escape were burned.
The sugar farmers – all members of the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFSW) – conducted a bungkalan (land cultivation) in Hacienda Nene that day.
The land property is owned by Carmen Tolentino but leased to Allan Subinco, police said.
But the NFSW claimed that the lot is covered by the agrarian reform program.
Human rights groups led by Karapatan-Negros are conducting an independent probe into the massacre.
The Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office, meanwhile, said it is looking into all the angles of the case, vowing a fair investigation./PN
