Massacre in age of forensic science

“As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.”
--Pythagoras

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- Did the perpetrators of the macabre Sagay massacre in the Philippines think we still live in the Neanderthal Age where a crime can be committed against any living creature and the assailant can easily get away unpunished?
In this age of forensic science where the Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a double-stranded molecule held together by weak hydrogen bonds between base pairs of nucleotides, plays a major role, among other scientific means of gathering pieces of evidence, even a crime committed years ago or those with no eye-witness account, can be solved.
Thus we are confident those who mercilessly gunned down members of the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFSW) who occupied the farm at Hacienda Nene in Purok Firetree in Sagay City, Negros Occidental on October 20, 2018, will be identified and arrested soon--depending on the determination of the Regional Police Office-6 (RPO-6) headed by Director John Bulalacao, who has ordered a no non-sense probe on the shocking massacre.
I first heard of the word “massacre” when I was a kid during the Martial Law years in the Philippines.
I heard of the Jabidah massacre or the killing of Moro soldiers by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on March 18, 1968.
It was also known as the Corregidor massacre as the killing reportedly took place on Corregidor Island.

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Even in the 70’s people were endlessly talking about it behind the curtain as the press was not free to discuss its details.
I also learned about the Escalante massacre in Escalante, Negros Occidental that claimed the lives of 20 people and wounded 24 others on my birthday, September 18, 1985.
The Escalante massacre jolted me as a young man.
Earlier that year, I was riding on a bicycle around the area where the massacre took place and I could vividly recall seeing nameless faces of farmers, vendors, and other ordinary folks doing their normal chores in that laid back municipality which became a fourth class city in 2001.
Four years earlier prior to the Escalante massacre, I heard about the Pata Island massacre in Pata, Sulu, Mindanao on February 12, 1981, which killed 119 Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) soldiers perpetrated by their supposed Moro National Liberation Front (MILF) allies.
After a couple of days in Pata Island, the Headquarters Service Company of the Philippine Army’s 31st Infantry Battalion were about to leave the island when a group of MNLF rebels and erstwhile ally Unad Masillam, a commander of the Civilian Home Defense Force (CHDF) surrounded them and opened fire.

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To name only a few of the famous massacres in the Philippines, there were the 1985 Inopacan massacre in Leyte (67 killed); 1987 Mendiola massacre in Manila (13 killed); 1989 Digos massacre (39 killed); 1995 Ipil massacre in Zamboanga del Sur (53 killed); 1998 Sara massacre in Iloilo (10 killed); 2009 Maguindanao massacre (58 killed including more than 40 journalists); 2014 Talipao massacre in Sulu (21 killed).
The recent massacre that killed nine people including children and women in the farm at Hacienda Nene in Purok Firetree in Sagay City, was still being investigated by a team led by Chief Insp. Roberto Mansueto, head of Sagay City Police Station, and personnel of 62nd Special Action Force.

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Unlike in some of the aforementioned massacres, the Sagay massacre occurred in the age of forensic science, or the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly--on the criminal side--during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal procedure.
Which means probers will not find it hard to identify the culprits who, initial police investigation claimed, could be mercenaries or armed bandits hired to kill the corn farmers.
We will continue to monitor the progress of this case and hope that justice will soon be served on the innocent civilians horrifically murdered without a valid cause and justification.