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Cops held after violent riot
19/11/2004 12:36  - (SA)  


Angry protesters shout as they hold a rally at a sugar hacienda owned by the family of former President Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. (Aaron Favila, AP)
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  • Manila - Nine Filipino policemen have been detained in connection with the fatal shooting of seven protesters at a riot outside a farm belonging to former president Corazon Aquino's family, police said on Friday.

    The seven, who include a suspected communist New People's Army (NPA) guerrilla, were shot dead on Tuesday when a strike by farm workers demanding more pay descended into violent clashes.

    Investigators now suspect that leftist arebels infiltrated the protesters' ranks to provoke a deadly response from the security forces, according to a preliminary police report.

    The insurgent Communist Party of the Philippines denied organising or taking part in the protests while vowing payback to the security forces.

    Gunpowder testing

    Nine officers were restricted to camp after gunpowder tests showed they may have fired weapons at Tuesday's clashes outside the sprawling Hacienda Luisita, police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil said.

    "Appropriate administrative and even criminal charges will be filed if evidence warrants," Bataoil said.

    Three of the corpses also tested positive for powder burns, said Senior Inspector Jesus Kabigting, head of the police unit investigating the shooting.

    Bataoil stressed that the gunpowder tests did not necessarily mean the 10 had fired guns on the day when thousands of strikers and sympathisers rioted at the gates of the 6 000-hectare farm near the northern city of Tarlac.

    A total of 110 people were arrested and 66 policemen were among dozens injured on both sides as hundreds of police and military men, backed by armoured vehicles, broke up the riot by striking workers and their sympathizers who were blocking the farm complex's main gate, investigators said.

    The arrested protesters have been charged in court with malicious mischief, coercion and resisting arrest, the police report said, adding that only seven were actual workers at Hacienda Luisita.

    Two rifles and a revolver were seized from the protesters, according to Kabigting, who also cited witnesses as saying they saw men with guns among the protesters.

    Police said they had returned fire from the ranks of thousands of demonstrators who had joined a small group of about 80 sugar mill workers striking for better wages and the reinstatement of more than 300 laid-off colleagues, including union leaders.

    Officials also said they were looking into the possibility that communist guerrillas with ties to leftist labour groups had instigated the riot, citing truckloads of outsiders brought into Tarlac, swelling the ranks of the protesters to about 25 000.

    One of the dead, Jun David, was in the "order of battle" as a suspected member of the communist party's armed wing the New People's Army (NPA), Kabigting said.

    Edited by Andrea Botha


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