Agsungot Massacre: Negros police director debunks military hand

Negros Oriental Provincial Police Office director, Chief Supt. Augusto Marquez Jr. does not believe the allegation of Karapatan-Cebu, a human rights group, that the military had a hand in the Agsungot massacre in Balamban town.

“Kung ang army pa, ngano nga ila pa man ni gipangitaan og ebidensya?” Marquez told The FREEMAN in a phone interview.

In a newspaper report yesterday, the chairman of the Karapatan-Cebu through an e-mail claimed surviving colleagues of the Agsungot couple in the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas and the now-defunct Panaghugpong sa Mag-uuma sa Sugbo witnessed how the 66th Infantry Battalion, 341st Philippine Constabulary Company, and Military Intelligence group “peppered” the family with bullets.

Marquez however debunked this claim, saying, “Dili gyud ni tinuod… I don’t think it is the 66th Infantry Battalion.”

The 66th IB was organized by the 3rd Infantry Division in Camp Lapu-Lapu in 1986, he said, adding that several months after it was organized, it was eventually deployed to Bohol until 1988.

As such, the 66th IB could not have been set up in Cebu before 1988, and the Agsungot massacre happened in October 9, 1985, said the police official.

A joint team from the 78th Infantry Battalion and the Cebu Provincial Police Office on Friday dug up nine skeletal remains of the Agsungot family in a mountain village in Balamban.

There was another version of the story of their fate, which said that the family was killed by the New People’s Army.

Way back in the 1980s, the Agsungot family was reported to be one of the supporters of the NPAs. — Joy Kareen T. Saliente/RAE