The NDF-Panay and all its member organizations especially the Pambansang Kilusang Magbubukid express much deep sorrow and loss at the brutal massacre of 9 landless farm workers in Sagay City on the night of October 20. We convey our most heartfelt sympathies to the families and friends of the hapless victims.

It was just the first night of the encampment of the landless peasants who planned to cultivate the uncultivated portion of the 75-hectare Hacienda Nene at Brgy Bulanon which was supposed to have been handed over to them a long time ago thru the government’s land reform program.

To grow food on land which they have sweated and labored on was the farm workers’ last resort in order to stave off hunger and poverty rather than resort to desperate actions such as looting, robbery, thievery or drugs. But instead of granting them their rightful claim to the land, the government’s agrarian agencies in Sagay and Negros remained deaf, dumb and numb to the farmers’ call for land reform. Worse Duterte’s paid hacks resorted to the swiftest solution – silence the farm workers forever.

Less than 24 hours after the nightmare murder of the farm workers, upon Duterte’s and Lorenzana’s cue, PNP Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao was quicker than Sherlock Holmes to declare that it was the NPA in cahoots with the NFSW organizers who staged the massacre. He rattled that this was part of the Red October plot to oust his mentally and physically sick master President. In no time at all Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Marañon also prattled that the massacre was scripted.

NDF-Panay condemns Bulalacao’s and Marañon’s statements as irresponsible, baseless and reprehensible LIES. These callous and unscrupulous Duterte paid hacks and minions have the gall to point fingers without resorting to in-depth investigation and without an iota of evidence that points to their accused. Ironic that Bulalacao is so quick to blame the NPA but cannot name a single suspected riding-in-tandem murderer on a killing spree in broad daylight.

Duterte, Lorenzana and Bulalacao hope to sing a revival of the Plaza Miranda massacre concocted by Marcos but which he attributed as the NPA’s doing. It is an old ploy of the fascist state from Marcos to Arroyo to Duterte to accuse the ‘left’ of atrocities executed by their own hirelings in order to muddle and distract the public’s attention from the real perpetrators – the mercenary AFP, PNP, para-military CAFGU, CAA and other paid goons – and from the real economic woes besetting the people.

The NPA is the genuine army of the people which includes most of all the poor and middle peasants, farm workers, workers in towns and cities, poor and middle fisherfolk and other sectors of the working class. The NPA fights for and defends the people. The NPA can never go against the people’s interests because it was created to genuinely serve the people.

On the other hand the AFP and PNP were founded by the reactionary state under US imperialist direction to serve the status quo and ruling class interests. Until today, the AFP and PNP boast of their mercenary and fascist tradition and orientation. They easily kill poor people in the countrysides and city slums but lick the ass of the number one butcher, drug user and drug protector in the country, no other than Duterte.

Thousands of peasants, farm workers, lumad and other indigenous people, Moro peasants, Christian settlers and other poor tillers of the soil have been murdered and massacred to give way to multinational corporations, land-grabbers, big bureaucrats and the big bourgeoisie. The Mendiola Massacre, Escalante Massacre in Negros Occidental, Hda Luisita Massacre, Bakong Bridge Massacre in Pandan, Antique and the Sagay Massacre are just a few in the long list of peasant massacres perpetuated by the state’s fascist and mercenary troops.

Until genuine agrarian reform is achieved the Philippine revolution will persist and endure. The peasant storm and people’s surge to defeat the imperialists and local ruling classes will not be long in coming. Only then will justice for the Sagay massacre victims and other peasant killings would have had been won.

Murders and massacres cannot daunt the enlightened peasant masses. Each day a peasant joins the New People’s Army to take up arms against the fascist troops and state, defend the people’s rights and gains until genuine land reform and national industrialization, true justice, democracy and freedom are attained.