HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
13th militant
leader killed in Negros
NFSW Organizer Shot Dead by Ski-masked Assassins
By Karl G.
Ombion
Bulatlat
BACOLOD City – In an
isolated highway of Hacienda Emma, Barangay (village) Manapla town, more
than 50 kms north of this city, two motorcycle-riding men in ski masks
blocked and shot Sanito Bargamento at around 3:15 p.m. Friday.
Bargamento, a member
of National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), was driving his
multicab pick-up with his wife and
negotiating an isolated dirt road when blocked and shot by assassins.
The pick-up zigzagged
for several meters until it stopped. The assassins followed and shot
Bargamento in the head and then fled. Bargamento’s wife Estrella suffered
bruises.
Chief Inspector Jose
Labuyo of the Manapla police said that they could not say yet if the
motive of the killing was political or personal.
NFSW secretary
general Butch Lozande, on the other hand, linked the killing to the
on-going “all out war of the Macapagal-Arroyo government against leftists
and other progressive groups.”
“The government’s
state security forces are our immediate suspects because they have been
waging extra-judicial killings against militant organizations. They alone
have the capability to do that, and Sanito Bargamento was a member of NFSW
fighting for laborers’ rights and welfare,” said Lozande.
Recovered from the
crime scene were two empty shells of .45 caliber pistol.
Since last year, 13
labor and peasant leaders in Negros had been killed, including
Bargamento’s brother,
Edwin, also an NFSW labor leader. He shot dead April 13, 2005, at his
house in Manapla. His case remains unsolved. Bulatlat
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