Negros and the new pivot

With the killing of Atty. Ramos, Negros has become the flashpoint and alarming showcase of the Duterte administration’s new pivot against peasant, indigenous, and legal progressive organizations. While the war on drugs remains unrelenting and has actually reached new areas of implementation including that of Cagayan de Oro, state agents are opening up a new war front gunning down activists and leaders of progressive organizations all over the country with the two provinces of Negros showcasing the more brutal and brazen of these ploys. The spate of killings Guihulngan, Negros Oriental is especially of note where scores of leaders of progressive organizations have been gunned down.

The Sagay 9 massacre was particularly chilling and extremely violent. Peasant workers and their children who were engaged in land cultivation action to stave off hunger during the dead season where gunned down too while they were sleeping by suspected government-armed paramilitaries working allegedly for the local landlord. Their bodies were then doused with gasoline by the gunmen in an attempt to destroy evidence. The suspicion that paramilitary groups are behind the dastardly act is a theory that is actually shared by both local agrarian reform authorities and the local unit of the New People’s Army in the wake of the massacre in their released statements to the media.

But a new theory is being forced by government authorities right after apalamon@gmail.com