Sugarcane farmworkers under the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), Kilusang Mambubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) together with PAMALAKAYA-Negros and AMIHAN-Negros stated they will be holding a protest in Negros Island to mark the 34th anniversary of the Mendiola Massacre, where peasants advocating for land reform before the Malacanang Palace in Manila were brutally slain, during a press conference on January 20, 2021 at the NFSW Office. The organizations state it coincides with the four year death anniversary of the brutal killing of Alexander Ceballios, a peasant leader in Negroso, which they state marked the first high profile political killing in Negros Island under the Duterte administration.
A regional leader of the National Federation of Sugar Workers, Alexander Ceballos was reportedly gunned down brutally in front of his wife and children last January 20, 2017 near his home along the boundary of Murcia and Don Salvador Benedicto in Negros Occidental.
According to Benny Alibutdan of KMP North Negros, the killing of Ceballos was the first of many gruesame attacks against peasants in Negros island. They add the perpetrators have gone on a rampage ever since, citing the Sagay Massacre last October 2018 and the Oplan Sauron related killings in Negros Oreintal.
Both progressive orgs also cited the more recent victims in Northern Negros of extrajudicial killings by alleged state agents:
- Sangguniang Bayan member Bernardino “Toto” Patigas and Felipe Dacal-Dacal; Escalante City
- Jerry Catologo, National Federation of Sugar Workers Escalante, 60 years old, killed June 2020
- Zara Alvarez, human rights activist and health worker from Cadiz City, 38 years old, killed last August 17, 2020
- Ernesto Valiente, peasant advocate and former barangay councilor of Brgy Malisbog, Escalante City, 60 years old, killed last October 22
- Atty. Ben Ramos
- Dr. Rose Sancelan, redtagged COVID-19 IATF Guihulngan City Chair killed last November 2020, along with her husband.
The progressive orgs also called for the following:
- Pass a new law for Genuine Agrarian Reform
- Cancel the amortization (or periodic loan payment) of land under Presidential Decree 27 (or ordering the emancipation of tenants from bondage of the soil and transferring to them the ownership of the land they till).
- Free distribution of land
- Liveable wages for farm workers
The organizations also called out the Duterte regime for not listening to the pleas of farmers and peasants for livable sugarcane worker wages and land reform, and instead responding with massacres and killings at the hand of the state.
Out of the 300 farmers & peasant victims of massacres and EJK under the Duterte administration, 106 of such are found in Negros, according to the mass organizations. Furthermore, they add that the martial law under the Marcos dictatorship has been revived under the Memorandum Order 32 and Anti-Terror Law, as well as accuse the administration for using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen the power of the military.
Lastly, the mass organizations remark that they will continue to resist the US-China-Duterte regime’s tyranny that, according to them, has hungered and afflicted the lives of peasants and farmers, and persist in their fight to advocate in resolving fundamental core problems that trifle these marginalized sectors.
Paghimutad 