Ambush in Philippines Kills Farmers Occupying Plantation Land

MANILA, Philippines — Armed men opened fire on a group of sugar cane farmers who were occupying part of a plantation in the central Philippines, killing nine, and then set three of the bodies on fire, police said Sunday.

Four other farmers, two of them minors, survived the attack late Saturday on a plantation outside the city of Sagay in Negros Occidental province and were under police protection as commandos pursued the attackers, police said.

Those who were killed were members of a farmers’ union, the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers, who began occupying the area over the weekend as part of a campaign to begin cultivating land covered by a government agrarian overhaul, police said. The state program, which dates to the 1980s, calls for redistributing private and public agricultural land to independent small farmers.

The vacant plot they had occupied belongs to Hacienda Nene, a vast sugar cane plantation, which has been subject to the government land program, rights workers and the farmers’ group said.

The farmers were resting in their tents when about 40 armed men surprised them with the attack, the initial police inquiry showed. Those who survived managed to scatter and hide, and they reported the episode to police hours later.

The bodies of three female victims were “burned by the suspects,” according to the police report.

“They were strafed by unknown perpetrators while already resting in their respective tents,” said Cristina Palabay, head of the rights group Karapatan, calling the attack “brutal and brazen.”

“We call on the Commission on Human Rights to conduct an independent and thorough investigation on the massacre,” Palabay said in a statement. “We are one with the kin of the victims in the Sagay massacre in their call for justice.”

The farmers’ union accused the hacienda’s private security personnel of being behind the killings. The plantation owners did not immediately comment.

Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao, the regional head of the police, said Sunday that a police commando unit was searching for the attackers, who had not been identified.

“Special Action Force is now on hot pursuit," Bulalacao said in a statement.

The agrarian measure was signed by President Corazon C. Aquino in the late 1980s, with the aim of redistributing roughly 8 million hectares of land, or almost 20 million acres, to farmers to help relieve poverty.

The program was twice extended, and as of last year 5 million hectares had been distributed, according to the government. But the redistribution has long been problematic. Many landowners have opposed it despite measures to compensate them for the acreage, and have sought to circumvent the program. Vast agricultural tracts have remained under the control of big family businesses and corporations.

When President Rodrigo Duterte came to power two years ago, he tapped leftist leader Rafael Mariano, who once represented farmers in the Philippine Congress, to lead the Department of Agrarian Reform.

Mariano vowed to lead redistribution of lands and in particular, but his appointment failed to get the nod of congress and he was later replaced.