BACOLOD City – The National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) in Negros Island will hold a “Black Friday Protest” to demand immediate justice for the nine massacred sugar farmers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental and the ouster of Agrarian Reform secretary John Castriciones.
Secretary-general Milton John “Ka Butch” Lozande said all of NFSW chapters will join the demonstration today.
He said Castriciones blamed the victims by saying that they have no right to occupy Hacienda Nene in Barangay Bulanon, Sagay City since they were not agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Armed men gunned the sugar workers down while they were resting in their makeshift bunker in the middle of the sugar field around 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 20. Three of the sugar workers who tried to escape were burned, police said.
The workers were doing a bungkalan (land cultivation) at the plantation that day.
“[Castriciones’] statements show that he has no right to be the head of the department that supposedly looks out for the interest of poor landless farmers as he was quick to blame the victims who only wanted to stave off hunger,” said Lozande.
Lozande asserted that the slain sugar workers – now called “Sagay 9” – had been petitioning for land ownership in the hacienda since 2003.
“It is now 2018. The Sagay 9 – along with hundreds of thousands of landless farmers – have long suffered injustices brought about by DAR’s decades of neglect and connivance with local landlords,” added Lozande.
According to Castriciones, the 75-hectare Hacienda Nene was donated to 25 persons before the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program was institutionalized.
This means that the bungkalan that the sugar farmers conducted was a violation of law, he added.
Castriciones also said the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) were not involved in the attack, adding that it was impossible for government forces to do such.
But Lozande believes that haciendas in the countryside are guarded by private armies, in cahoots with the AFP and the PNP./PN
