Sagay killings highlight serious rights abuses in PHL — Human Rights Watch

The killing of nine sugarcane farmers in Sagay, Negros Occidental highlights the serious rights abuses in the country, the Human Rights Watch said.

“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,’” the HRW said on its website.

The HRW alleged that security forces in Negros have also targeted peasants, sugar workers, and activists in the counter-insurgency campaign of the government, at the same time tagging them as members of the New People’s Army (NPA).

Like the survivors from the Sagay Massacre, they deny that they are part of the rebel group, but said that their motive in occupying and using lands is merely to survive, the rights group said.

The HRW added that there have been countless political killings blamed on  government security forces, citing the ‘Escalante Massacre’ in 1985 where 20 peasants and activists were killed when police and military men opened fire at a protest march.

The group also said that agrarian violence is not uncommon in the Philippines.

It added that the Duterte administration needs to ‘promptly, credibly, and impartially carry out  an investigation and appropriately prosecute those responsible to prevent further agrarian violence.’

Authorities have pointed to the communists rebels as suspects in the killing, even as a special task force had been formed by the Department of Agrarian Reform to look into the incident. — Joviland Rita/RSJ, GMA News