đź“·Courtesy of Bayan Muna
As the Senate blue ribbon committee starts its hearing on former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war today, and as the Quad committee at the House of Representatives pursues its hearings in the next couple of weeks, KARAPATAN express its solidarity with the thousands of victims of extrajudicial killings and their families who are seeking justice and accountability from the murderous Duterte regime.
Extrajudicial killings (EJK) have long served as a weapon wielded by state fascists to quell mass resistance and spread terror.
Rodrigo Duterte is accountable for the extrajudicial killings of up to 30,000 drug suspects, but he is likewise responsible for the summary execution of 422 political activists and the frustrated extrajudicial killing of 544 others. Add to this at least 39 hors de combat extrajudicially killed by Duterte forces in violation of International Humanitarian Law.
The well-organized EJK operation involving a drug watchlist that functioned as a hit list, kill quotas and a reward system (reportedly financed by POGO) is not an original Duterte invention.
Duterte built on the dirty work of his predecessors.
During Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s time, her military maintained “orders of battle” or hit lists of activists and suspected supporters or sympathizers of the revolutionary movement and chose their kills from this list, following a quota. By the time Arroyo’s term ended, she was responsible for some 1,206 extrajudicial killings, 800 of whom were perpetrated in her first six years in power, and more than 200 enforced disappearances.
Faced with political backlash, Arroyo later denied the existence of “orders of battle.” Her successor Benigno Aquino III not only maintained it, he legalized it through DND-DILG Memorandum Circular 14-2012 which authorized the payment of rewards to anyone with information leading to the “arrest or neutralization” of 235 persons alleged to be high-ranking leaders of the CPP-NPA-NDF. KARAPATAN documented 332 extrajudicial killings under Aquino.
With this backdrop, it was a relatively simple matter for Duterte to amplify his Davao Death Squad into a nationwide operation funded by POGO monies and targeting not only drug suspects but political activists. Aquino’s list of 235 names ballooned under Duterte to some 600 individuals alleged to be CPP-NPA-NDF personalities included in a “proscription list.” The enactment of laws against terrorism and terrorist financing expanded the legal bases for arbitrarily connecting activists to terrorism and rendering them vulnerable to unjust arrest on trumped-up charges or “neutralization,” a common military euphemism for killing.
Duterte’s successor, the dictator’s scion Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has not done away with this hit list/bounty system, and killings continue to mount under his term. He has 105 cases of extrajudicial killings and 75 frustrated EJKs to his name in his first two years in power.
The US turns a blind eye to the perpetration of extrajudicial killings in crushing insurgencies and quelling dissent, for as long as their puppet in power is able to promote and protect American economic and political interests. US hypocrisy was evident when then US Vice Pres. George Bush Sr. gushed to Marcos Sr.: “We love your adherence to democratic principles.” He blurted out these infamous words when he visited the Philippines in June 1981, while martial law was ravaging the country. It was only when Marcos Sr. had clearly turned into a liability that the US disowned him.
Today, the US is propping up Marcos Sr.’s son in power with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military assistance, in exchange for Marcos Jr.’s unabashed puppetry, which includes dragging the Philippines into the US’ hegemonic wars against China. To date, the Philippines is the biggest recipient of US military aid in Southeast Asia.
None of the US-supported despots, not Marcos Sr., not Arroyo, not Duterte or Marcos Jr. has paid for their crimes. It is high time they did.
Impunity for extrajudicial killings and other grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by these US-sponsored fascists must stop.
We must exact accountability not only for the horrific drug war killings under Duterte. We must attain justice for all the other horrendous extrajudicial killings perpetrated in the Philippines in furtherance of tyranny.#
