Photo credit: KASAMA TK

Satement

The Coalition of Agricultural Workers International (CAWI) condemns the massacre of nine agricultural workers, including four women and two minors, allegedly by 40 armed goons on October 20 in Hacienda Nene, Sagay City, Negros Occidental, and calls on the Duterte government to immediately bring to justice the perpetrators of such heinous and inhumane act.

The victims were members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) and earlier that day participated in the bungkalan or land cultivation of 75 hectares of land in Hacienda Nene which had been placed under the agrarian reform program but until now remains undistributed.

The sugar workers of Negros Island are among the poorest in the country and have long been struggling against hunger wages and tiempo muerto. The bungkalan or land cultivation, a nationwide campaign spearheaded by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), was participated in by landless farmers and agricultural workers including the massacred NFSW members, to ward off hunger and further impoverishment.

Bungkalan participants, along with farmers, agricultural workers, indigenous peoples, and others who are struggling for their right to land, have long been subject to extrajudicial killings and human rights violations by state armed forces and private armed groups. In the two years of the Duterte administration alone, at least 160 have already been killed. #