MANILA, Philippines — Human rights abuses are not limited to President Rodrigo Duterte's so-called war on drugs as shown in the murder of nine sugarcane workers in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, rights observer Human Rights Watch said.
The victims were resting in makeshift tents at Hacienda Nene in Purok Firetree, Barangay Bulanon when around 40 men opened fire on Saturday evening.
HRW researcher Carlos Conde said the Duterte administration should investigate and prosecute those responsible for the incident and to prevent agrarian violence.
"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,'" Conde said in a dispatch issued Tuesday.
Conde noted that agrarian violence has been present in the country, "which is still grappling with the landlessness that has been blamed for massive poverty that in turn has fueled a half-century-long communist insurgency."
Countless political killings have been blamed to landowners, the New People's Army and government troops in Negros.
In 1985, 20 peasants and activists holding a protest march in Escalante City, Negros Occidental were killed when police and military personnel opened fire at them.
"Security forces in Negros have also targeted peasants, sugar workers, and labor activists in the government’s counter-insurgency campaign, often accusing them of being New People’s Army members," Conde said.
Sugar worker groups have insisted that their occupations of plantations in Negros were for their survival, countering claims of the military that the NPA has forced them to "provide logistics."
Malacañang has condemned the killing of the sugar workers in Sagay City, calling the murder a cruel act.
"Families of the victims of this cruel act can count on the government that it will enforce the full wrath of the law against its perpetrators," presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo also said.