If the current administration were passionate in rendering justice to the victims of Duterte Death Squads (DDS), then it should work to pursue justice by documenting all the murders committed by the former president and his henchmen, charging him with capital offenses for the summary killings of minors, adults and people with disabilities in Davao City, Metro Manila and the rest of this benighted country.
Such commitment to render justice to the victims, their friends and colleagues would certainly warm the heart of Redemptorist Fr. Amado “Picx” Picardal, who passed away on May 29, 2024 at 69. Known as the “biking priest,” Picardal bravely documented the summary killings of vendors, street waifs, part-time laborers and anyone who looked like a “drug dealer,” acted like a “drug pusher” and smelled like a “drug user.”
Indefatigable and uncompromising in equal measure, Fr. Picardal sought witnesses, interviewed them and worked with lawyers to compile the testimonies that exposed Duterte’s necromania, his lust for blood and his disrespect for basic human rights. The investigation into the DDS murders led to the priest’s being targeted by the hitmen, and in no time, Picardal was shadowed by the same men who were adequately paid by taxpayer money. The Redemptorists eventually transferred Picardal to Cebu.
Provincial superior Fr. Edilberto Cepe said “Fr. Picx was a brilliant and courageous missionary. He was a passionate advocate of peace and social justice and a professor of theology who has touched and transformed the lives of many. May the light and joy that he left this world radiate through us as we continue to become beacons of truth and social transformation. Please join us in praying for his eternal repose as he now finally joins our Redeemer.”
Picardal’s demise will be mourned by hundreds of families in Davao City who have lost relatives to the DDS scourge, which Duterte encouraged as he visited each murder scene, kicked the remains of the victims and cursed them to Kingdom come. Of the estimated 3,000 victims in Davao City, no one enjoyed the benefit of the doubt, not a single one was treated to due process, including those whom the killers admitted were not really their targets. Yet, it was lucrative business, with some DDS hitmen getting paid P20,000 per victim, the reward charged to some items beyond the scrutiny of the Commission on Audit (COA.)
Duterte’s accusers have claimed that those who wasted the former mayor’s pet peeves were handsomely paid, as in the case of Jun Pala, an ex-Duterte ally turned his nemesis, whose killers were given more than P1-million for their dastardly crime. As Duterte treated Pala as garbage, “mayroon talagang pera mula sa basura.” Graft-ridden projects during the Duterte dynastic rule in Davao City funded its necromania and its greed for power and pelf.
There is no sense in treating Duterte, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, Sebastian and Paulo with kid gloves. They treat Davao City as their kingdom, consider themselves entitled to confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) and pork barrel (with Polong Duterte getting P51-billion in allotments for just three years in his congressional district), along with billions more in projects that ended being built by crony construction firms owned by the owner of the universe, Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy of Lubao, Pampanga and Davao City, or by the relatives of Bong Go, who eventually became a senator of this forlorn republic. They do not differentiate the functions of the legislative and the executive branches and want to control the judiciary as well. They may have all undergone some cursory education but knowledge has escaped them. They deserve the boot, no less.
So, now, Fr. Picardal is at rest. But the movement he spearheaded is moving full speed ahead, damning all the torpedoes the Dutertes are attempting to fire against them. As the face of the Coalition Against Summary Execution, which monitored DDS killings and assisted immensely the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Human Rights Watch (HRW) to inquire deeply into those killings, Picardal will never be forgotten for standing up to barbarians who thought they have the power of life and death over Filipinos and parlayed public funds to subsidize extra-judicial killings (EJKs.)
