Peasant group slams charges vs 2 Sagay farm workers

A national peasant group has described as “rotten” the government’s investigation of the Oct. 20 massacre of nine sugarcane workers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, after the Philippine National Police filed multiple murder charges against two farm worker-activists.

“The Duterte government … exposed itself as having no intention to solve the ‘Sagay 9’ massacre and hold the perpetrators accountable when it filed multiple charges against the farm worker-activists,” the Amihan Peasant Women said in a statement.

Linking farm workers Rene Manlangit and Rogelio Arquillo, members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers in Sagay, to the crime was meant to cover up the fact that landowners kept private armies as a countermeasure against farmers asserting their right to own land, the group said. —Karl R. Ocampo