By DOMINIC GUTOMAN
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Human rights group Karapatan said that the hearings of Quad committee in the House of Representatives (HOR) and the Senate further solidify its assertion that the extrajudicial killings is a state policy.
“There’s a policy being followed. It wouldn’t be organized if there was no structure or if they weren’t following a certain method. We have observed this for a long time. For as long as we can remember, extrajudicial killings (EJKs) have persisted as an unofficial practice across administrations, even while being denied as official policy,” said Cristinna Palabay, secretary general of Karapatan, in Filipino.
The recent Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on October 28 invited former President Rodrigo Duterte as a resource speaker.
Llore Pasco, mother of two people killed during Duterte’s bloody drug war, watched the hearing online, after they mounted a protest calling for justice for the drug war victims. “He sees us as worthless, just animals. We are of no use to him, so he feels he can kill the poor. Mothers like me watched his hearing and we saw no remorse in him. We felt that he was even proud,” Pasco said.
Pasco noted that Duterte maintained his “rude, arrogant, and sarcastic” attitude. She added that Duterte is selective what investigation to attend to, implicating that he was only attending where his allies were present.
Among those who were part of the Senate probe to drug war killings were Senators Ronaldo “Bato” dela Rosa and Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, despite being linked to the drug war campaign of Rodrigo Duterte.
“Duterte still thinks that he is powerful. He respects no one and he does not have a heart for the poor people who were victims of his drug war. He should take accountability,” said Pasco in an interview with Bulatlat.
The false narrative of ‘nanlaban’
Pasco has been fighting for justice for seven years. Her sons Crisanto Antonio and Juan Karlos were found dead in Arboretum, Quezon City. Crisanto was supposed to get his security license for his job on May 11, 2017. A day after, Pasco and her other children found out about the death of Crisanto and Juan in a television newscast.
“In the pictures, there was a gun adjacent to the right hand of my son [Juan Karlos]. But I told them that he was left-handed, then suddenly they removed the photograph of my son with the gun,” said Pasco.
This is a common portrait of “nanlaban”, drug war victims killed because the police claimed they allegedly “fought back.”
“What I said was this, let’s be straightforward: encourage the criminals to fight, encourage them to draw their guns. That’s my instruction—encourage them to resist; if they resist, kill them to put an end to the problems in my city,” Duterte said in Filipino.
Former Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares, who has represented the families of drug war victims and a counsel of complainants before the International Criminal Court (ICC), said that the testimony of Duterte exposes the narrative of “nanlaban” as false, rendering the police’s claim of self-defense obsolete.
“Two elements are crucial for self-defense under the law. First, there was an unlawful aggression on the part of the victim. Second, there was no sufficient provocation on the part of the perpetrator,” said Colmenares. “Both of these elements are no longer valid since Duterte ordered the police. There was no unlawful aggression on the victim and there was provocation on the side of the perpetrator.”
He also added that Duterte made himself a co-conspirator to the individual cases of the police, who may be tried for their drug war engagement, since he took full responsibility for his orders to the Philippine National Police.
Method to the madness
Palabay dubbed the state policy as “method to the madness.” She added that the hearings revealed that there is a list – of people to kill, “drug” list – and there was an order. The worst part, she said, is that the order to kill was rewarded or incentivized.
Former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) General Manager Royina Garma, who also served as Cebu City police chief under Duterte’s administration, detailed how the latter contacted her to implement war on drugs on a national scale, replicating the Davao model. The model is an incentivized system that involves three levels of payments.
“First is the reward if the suspect is killed. Second is the funding of planned operations. Third is the refund of operational expenses,” said Garma in the HOR’s quad committee hearing.
Read: ‘Punish Duterte’ – kin of drug war victims
Garma also added that rewards started from P20,000 ($343.95) to P1 million ($??17,197.50), depending on the profile of the suspects. She also emphasized that the rewards were only meant for killings, not for the arrest of the drug suspects.
She also revealed that rewards for anti-drug operations by the police involved several key figures, including then-Special Assistant to the President Bong Go, an individual known as “Muking” from the Presidential Management Staff, a “Pedro” from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, and former National Police Commission (Napolcom) Commissioner Edilberto Leonardo, who handled the distribution of the payments.
This, for Karapatan, is alarming since there are public funds being used to incentivize the killings of drug war. “The problem here is that the source of funds may come from confidential and intelligence funds (CIF). It does not come from nowhere, there are funds being used to fund the killings both in drug war and counterterrorism,” said Palabay.
The House quad committee, through House public order and safety chairperson and Laguna Representative Dan Fernandez, said in a press conference that they will investigate the alleged use of the intelligence fund for supposed rewards of drug killings.
Other faces of drug war casualties
Colmenares also emphasized that there were also new sets of victims – aside from people who use drugs, couriers and supplies – who do not have any linkages with the drug war campaign, but still victimized by the extrajudicial killings.
“First are those who stand against corruption. I am talking about Barayuga. He probably never tasted drugs, he was only included in the drug narcolist and killed to hide the things he was exposing,” said Colmenares.
He was referring to PCSO Board Secretary Wesley Barayuga, who was killed by unidentified gunman on July 30, 2020 in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila. During the time of Duterte, then NCR Police Office chief Debold Sinas said that Barayuga might be part of the narcolist, despite the lack of evidence.
“The next victims are the opposition leaders such as the case of Leila de Lima, human rights defenders who have no knowledge about the drug war trade. They were only criticizing the human rights violations of the government,” said Colmenares.
Bulatlat closely followed the cases of human rights defenders who were labeled as “communist-terrorists,” charged with trumped-up charges, disappeared, and worse, killed. Colmenares mentioned the victims of Bloody Sunday in Southern Tagalog and the Oplan Sauron in the Negros region.
Read: Negros killings, ‘a war against unarmed civilians’ — groups
Podcast: Context behind the ‘Bloody Sunday’
The last set of victims, he added, are the lawyers. He cited the case of following lawyers: Rogelio Bato Jr., who was killed with a 15-year old child (August 23, 2016); human rights lawyer Benjamin Ramos, who was shot dead by a motorcycle-riding gunmen in front of a store in Negros Occidental (November 6, 2018); Juan Macababbad, a public interest lawyer who was shot dead outside his residence in South Cotabato by unidentified individuals (September 15, 2021), among others.
Notably, the NUPL reported that 59 of the 133 lawyers killed in the Philippines since 1984 were slain under the administration of Duterte. Most of them were human rights lawyers representing drug war victims, human rights defenders, and activists. In 2021, they submitted their report to the Supreme Court and the United Nations pushing for legal remedies, prompt investigation, and compel the Philippine government to adhere with the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers.
Warcry of the victims’ families
“Ever since then, the killings have not stopped. Even the administration of Marcos Jr.,” Pasco said in Filipino. “We, families [of drug war victims], are disappointed with the recent developments.”
In an earlier Bulatlat report, lawyers and the families underscored that the government has blocked the families’ access to justice, relying on their own resources. A stark problem, they mentioned, is how the police and authorities make it hard for the public and independent investigating bodies to access relevant documents related to drug war victims.
Police investigation reports, autopsy reports, and other documentary evidence are hard to retrieve from the Philippine National Police (PNP), pushing the families to gather their own evidence for their defense. There are also cases when the victims’ cause of death were fabricated, as in the case of the police citing natural causes even if gunshots were the actual cause of death.
Read: Duterte administration blocked drug war victims’ access to justice, lawyers say
Pasco is also a coordinator of Rise Up for Life and for Rights, a network of families and advocates of victims of extrajudicial killings. They are among the organizations that have submitted complaints before the ICC, which is currently at the stage of preliminary investigation. They also submitted a report to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2022.
She also said that even in the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the drug war killings have continued. As of now, there are 822 victims of drug-related killings in the Marcos Jr.’s administration, according to the Dahas project of UP Third World Studies.
“We are challenging the administration of Marcos Jr. to account for the drug war probes. He has to give attention to the families who lost their loved ones, especially those that came from poor households. Under his watch, the killings should stop because it has continued,” said Pasco.
Together with the human rights lawyers, lawmakers from Makabayan bloc, and activists, Pasco called on the Marcos administration to cooperate with the investigation of the ICC. (RVO)
