Davao killings: Revolt of periphery

DAVAO CITY Mayor Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte is by far the most controversial on the short list of candidates who have declared their intention to seek the presidency in the May 2016 general elections. He is known for setting loose “death squads” purportedly linked to him to kill criminals.

He sets the tone and focus of the issues of next year’s balloting. The central theme of his campaign—law and order—overshadows such issues as economic growth, poverty and social reform that have attracted international attention for Duterte’s summary and arbitrary approach.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Philippine government to investigate Duterte for his possible role in extrajudicial killings in Davao City over the past decades. A document issued by HRW has charged Duterte with continuing to espouse the killing of criminal suspects to combat crime in a city that has long had high numbers of apparent death squad executions—more than 1,000 since the late 1990s.

Duterte, who has been mayor of Davao since 1988, has flaunted this death toll to his critics. He said in a speech on May 15 that his approach to crime fighting depended on the killing of suspected criminals. “We’re the ninth safest city,” he said. “How do you think did I do it? How I reached that title among the world’s safest cities. Kill them all (criminals).”

Human rights

The mayor’s approach flew in the face of accepted international standards in respect for human rights. In calling for the Philippine government’s investigation of Duterte, Phelim Kline, HRW deputy director, emphatically rejected the mayor’s method.

“The Philippine government should take a zero-tolerance to any public official who publicly endorses extrajudicial killings as an acceptable means of crime control,” he said. “Duterte’s public support for extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals should prompt a long overdue investigation into his possible role in those deaths.”

Probable cause

Duterte has been speaking across the Philippines for the past six months, touting the killing of suspected criminals as an effective crime control technique. HRW documented the existence of the Davao Death Squad (DDS) and Duterte’s role in it in its 2009 report, “You can Die Anytime.”

The HRW report on extrajudicial killings included the Davao killings in its 2009 investigation and called on the government to end the use of death squads as a means of crime fighting. The official Commission on Human Rights (CHR) investigated these allegations and in 2012 issued a resolution saying that it found probable cause to recommend that the Office of the Ombudsman file murder charges against Duterte.

But the Ombudsman swept the charges under the rug and limited its investigation to police officers implicated in the killings—not Duterte himself—

finding 21 of them guilty of “simple neglect of duty” and fining them the equivalent of a month’s salary. The Court of Appeals later overturned the verdict, saying the Ombudsman merely used statistics against the police officers. To date, not one person has been convicted for involvement in any of the killings.

The Ombudsman has not investigated Duterte for his role in the DDS. Neither has the Department of the Interior and Local Government, which is under the Office of the President and has administrative control over municipal governments. The National Bureau of Investigation, which is under the Department of Justice, has likewise failed to probe Duterte’s alleged links to the DDS.

Official tolerance

Duterte has a long history of inflammatory public statements that appeared to encourage the extrajudicial killing of suspected criminals. He has ordered his police officers to “shoot to kill” people, ranging from suspected criminals to rice smugglers. That action has fueled protests from rights groups, including the CHR, which denounced the mayor for his statement, and urged him to operate within “the rule of law.”

What’s alarming is that Duterte’s model of extrajudicial killings appeared to have spread to other cities in the country. US state department cables released by WikiLeaks in 2011 noted the apparent rise of municipal government-sanctioned death squads, including the cities of Cebu, Toledo and Carcar.

“The long official tolerance of Duterte’s advocacy of summary killings as an effective crime fighting strategy needs to stop,” Kline said. The government should send an unambiguous message to Duterte and other officials that support for extrajudicial killings results in an

investigation—not in speaking tours to gain electoral support for presidential bids in the 2016 balloting.

The Davao killings have raised questions from many sectors among the public, such as, despite calls to probe Duterte’s alleged links with the death squads, why the government has turned a blind eye to this clamor, or why the government is extremely reluctant to hold the mayor accountable for the murders in the category of genocidal slaughters sponsored by the state or regime, such as Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” in the extermination of millions of Jewish inmates at their concentration camps.

Another issue looms over Duterte’s role in the Davao killings: Is it part of a cover-up to whitewash his involvement in the death squads amid recent poll surveys showing Duterte as the front-runner in the voters preference for president in the 2006 balloting. Is the government rattled by the survey results? The government should be calling the shots in setting the agenda of discourse in the elections—not the upstart challenger Duterte, a provincial challenger from the ranks of local executives. The government faces a revolt from the periphery.