MANILA, Philippines—Davao broadcast journalist Fernando “Batman” Lintuan was shot dead the day before Christmas, in sickeningly familiar manner. An assassin riding tandem with an accomplice on a motorcycle killed the hard-hitting radio commentator at an intersection.

“The method used leaves no doubt that it was a targeted killing of a journalist,” a statement from the international journalism watchdog Reporters without Borders noted pointedly.

It is still too early to know who killed Lintuan, but the circumstances did not stop Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon from raising the possibility that the Davao Death Squad—a shadowy group of so-called vigilantes who have killed some 500 victims in Davao City since 1998—could be behind the killing. “We are looking at that link. That is one of the angles that we are looking into,” Razon said.

Razon has been generous with suggestive but essentially generic statements before (consider, to give just one example, the immediate aftermath of the Glorietta 2 explosion). But Davao Rep. Prospero Nograles, once the majority leader in the House of Representatives, has also pointed a finger at the Death Squad; perhaps there may really be a connection worth looking into.

Lintuan “could [have been killed by the] Davao Death Squad and the usual suspects,” Nograles said, without elaborating. To be sure, Nograles is a political rival of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who is often linked to the Death Squad. But Duterte, who has denied any such connection, habitually uses language that coyly suggests approval of the killings. In an interview with davaotoday.com in 2005, for example, Duterte redefined the behavior he expects of good citizens: “Why would you be afraid each time I say, ‘You criminals are sons of bitches! I’m going to kill all of you!’? If you’re afraid, then you must be a criminal.” (The interview is available online.)

It is only fair, then, that a mayor who seems to enjoy the “benefits” of a liquidation squad while disclaiming any criminal liability for them should be made to account for the killings that bear down on Davao like a guilt-stricken conscience.

Several enterprising journalists have already written about the grim record of the Death Squad or Duterte’s seemingly happy inability to stop it; a comprehensive report by Carlos Conde, for instance, came out in the International Herald Tribune the other year. But the final report of UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, now filed with the United Nations, places Davao’s problem in clear relief.

The report devotes only a few paragraphs to the killings in Davao, but together they are a stinging indictment of Duterte and his administration. “It is a commonplace that a death squad known as the ‘Davao Death Squad’ (DDS) operates in Davao City,” the first sentence of the first paragraph reads.

It is not yet clear whether Lintuan’s motorcycle-riding assassin wore a mask, but we wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t. As Alston noted in his report: “One fact points very strongly to the officially-sanctioned character of these killings: No one involved covers his face.”

The authorities, of course, are considering other angles. As Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza, a Davao politician, noted on the day of the assassination, Lintuan had survived an attack by the New People’s Army two decades ago. He had also hit hard against illegal loggers, as well as other targets. More recently, however, he also took on City Hall, for its allegedly overpriced “People’s Park” project.

His death plunges his four children into the disorienting uncertainty of orphanhood, and refocuses the nation’s attention on extrajudicial killings (and the killing of journalists). But it should also, and finally, force Davao’s residents, especially those belonging to the middle forces, to demand a thorough investigation of the Death Squad, and to reconsider the costs of willed ignorance.

“By all accounts,” Alston wrote, “the mayor has managed to largely insulate his city from the armed conflict and to limit the presence of some kinds of criminal activity. These accomplishments appear to have bought acquiescence in the measures he takes, and the public remains relatively ignorant of the human cost of death squad ‘justice.’”