PRESIDENT RODRIGO R. Duterte on Tuesday visited the site where nine farmers were killed while occupying part of a sugar plantation, according to activists there.
But Malacañang on Tuesday night said Mr. Duterte’s visit “will not push through,” citing the “inclement weather.”
Also on Tuesday, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has been instructed to conduct an investigation on the massacre, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said.
Two minors were among those killed on Saturday night in Negro Occidental province’s Sagay City, according to the PNP, which said it was investigating reports that gunmen opened fire on the farmers.
The National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) said the farmers had been staging “bungkalan,” or collective cultivation of idle farmland that they had occupied.
“Bungkalan reflects the failure of the government’s land reform program and the landlords’ refusal to distribute land to the tillers,” the NFSW said in a statement.
The land was earmarked for redistribution under the government’s agrarian reform program, but the plantation owner had used a private security force to intimidate the farmers, according to NFSW.
Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement that Mr. Duterte was “deeply perturbed” by the killings and had ordered “a thorough and impartial investigation.”
Mike Concepcion, a campaigner with the rights group Bayan Negros in Sagay City, said Mr. Duterte visited the spot where the farmers were murdered, and was scheduled to meet with their families in City Hall where the coffins have been placed.
While the President’s visit is “unprecedented,” it does not negate the fact that the government has failed to implement agrarian reform, and protect farmers and activists, said Christina Palabay of the rights group Karapatan.
“We have demanded a genuine agrarian reform program to ensure redistribution of agricultural land and adequate support for farmers,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We are conducting our own fact-finding mission, but we are not confident that these perpetrators will be brought to justice.”
Also on Tuesday, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has been instructed to conduct an investigation on the massacre, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said.
For his part, Mr. Guevarra told reporters in a text message: “I have instructed NBI to come in.”
The NBI, an agency under the Department of Justice (DoJ), is tasked to investigate and file the necessary complaints before the department.
In an update to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Guevarra said, “I have directed the NBI to do its own investigation of the Sagay massacre, to submit progress reports to the DoJ, and to file the appropriate complaint as the evidence may warrant against the perpetrators of the crime.”
For its part, New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a statement, “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.’”
In its statement, the Movement Against Tyranny said it “urges independent legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate to probe the Sagay 9 Massacre.”
“We likewise urge the Commission on Human Rights to work closely with people’s organizations in tapping independent experts.” — Reuters, with Vann Marlo M. Villegas

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