Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol turns over financial assistance to the relatives
of Sagay 9 victims at the wake in the city gymnasium on Friday, with Mayor Alfredo
Marañon III & Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr.
Sagay 9 refers to the nine sugarcane farmers who were victims of massacre in Sagay City in Negros Occidental.
The AFP for the meantime said that the massacre was part of the communist rebels’
“grand design” to aggravate the situation and oust President Rodrigo Duterte.
AFP chief of staff Lieutenant General Carlito Galvez Jr. said the military was
looking into three leads behind the killing of the farmers, including the
involvement of the communist rebels.
The regional chief of the Philippine National Police has announced that a witness
to the Oct. 20 massacre of nine sugar workers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, is
in its custody and knows one of the suspects.
Chief Supt. John Bulalacao, police director of Western Visayas, like the AFP, also
said the killing was part of a sinister plan by the New People’s Army (NPA) to
discredit the Duterte administration.
The witness personally knows one of the suspects because he lives here. Therefore,
he could tell exactly what happened and identify the suspect,” said Bulalacao, who
visited the site of killing at Hacienda Nene, Barangay Bulanon, with Armed Forces
Chief of Staff Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr.
Chief Supt. Bulalacao did not identify the witness nor say if the witness is
a member of the NPA.
The police, he said, is pursuing three angles.
“It might have been perpetrated by the owner of the property using hired goons
[or by] the donees or the legitimate claimants of the property,” Bulalacao said.
“The third angle that we are pursuing and are inclined to believe is this was
perpetrated by the [NPA] in their desire to discredit the administration, the
Armed Forces of the Philippines and the PNP,” he added.
Eleven workers were resting inside a tent in the sugarcane field — which is the
subject of a land dispute, according to investigators — when five to six assailants
arrived and opened fire on them on Saturday night.
Two of the workers escaped, but nine of their companions died on the spot. The
gunmen burned the bodies of three of the victims, said Chief Insp. West Edquila,
head of the PNP Crime Laboratory in Region 6.
The AFP Chief of staff said the killing could be part of the “Red October” plot of
the Communist Party of the Philippines and the NPA to destabilize the government and
force the ouster of President Rodrigo Duterte. (Inquirer)