ON OCT. 20, 2018, nine members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), including three women and two minors, were killed on the night they cultivated a disputed land in Sagay City.

The NFSW believes that they were killed by para-military state forces called SCAA because of previous killings of their members by the said group.

Instead of obtaining justice from the Duterte regime, two members of the NFSW who survived the massacre were even charged of the killings and arrest warrants were issued to them. This is based supposedly from an eyewitness account of a former New People’s Army (NPA) rebel who allegedly saw the two in an NPA camp where the massacre was planned.

Never mind, when the Department of Justice (DOJ) initially described the allegations against the two NFSW members as circumstantial. Never mind also when the two had relatives who were killed in the massacre. To hell to those who say that blood is thicker than water.

What is important is that even when there was still no investigation being done on the massacre, the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Philippine military already concluded that it was the NPA who did this dastardly act. Other than that, the NFSW allegedly colluded with the NPA in planning the massacre to blame this on the Duterte government to isolate it from the public.

Even before the massacre happened, the military already publicly stated that NFSW and members of other peasant organizations who organized land cultivation areas (LCAs) in disputed areas did these to raise funds for the NPA.