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Human rights alliance KARAPATAN called on the House of Representatives’ Quad Committee to take a deep-dive investigation into the bloody trail of funds and police officers responsible for drug-related extrajudicial killings which seems to present leads on the possible perpetrators of the killings of activists and ordinary folks during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.
The rights group issued the call, following additional revelations of retired police colonel Royina Garma, who stated that the Davao City government funded the police operations which resulted in killings in the city from June 2014 to January 2016, aside from the use of public funds and rewards given to police officers during President Duterte’s drug war thereafter. Police colonel Edilberto Leonardo confirmed this during his replies to questions during the latest hearing.
“Through this system of rewards,” she added, “human rights violators were provided incentives to kill and kill again, and all their operational expenses were sourced from the local government. These revelations further fuel our observations that the killings of human rights defenders, freedom fighters and other dissenters were likewise incentivized under the same reward system.”
Such observations are not without basis. In 2020, Duterte dangled a PhP 2- million reward for anyone who could kill or cause the death or capture of a top-ranking communist.
Former President Benigno Aquino III institutionalized a bounty system through the issuance of the joint memorandum circular 14-2012 of the Department of National Defense and the Department of Interior and Local Government 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. The list, known in military parlance as an “order of battle,” was in use during the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, doubling as a hit list. More than 1,500 extrajudicial killings of activists were perpetrated under the Arroyo and Aquino regimes through these bounty/hit list systems.
“Public monies are being used to kill Filipinos and what better way to do this than to use funds that are beyond public scrutiny. This monstrous system of using public funds to incentivize human rights violators must stop,” said Palabay.
KARAPATAN also called on the Quad Comm to further question police captain Kenneth Paul Albotra, who was said to have boasted to Garma his role in killing Tanauan, Batangas Mayor Antonio Halili in July 2018. Albotra’s assignments from 2017 onwards seem to indicate that he may have been involved during the Sauron police operations that resulted in the killings of activists and farmers in Negros.
“In addition to Albotra, former PNP Chief Debold Sinas, who helmed Sauron operations when he assumed the post of police Region 7 chief in June 2018 to October 19, should also be summoned for questioning. Sinas should also be quizzed on the successive police operations when he headed the NCR Police Office and when he was PNP chief, when arbitrary arrests and detention of activists were conducted based on questionable search warrants and planted evidence,” Palabay added.
The rights group also said that police colonel Lito Patay should again face questions of the Quad Comm on his role in the Bloody Sunday killings on March 7, 2021, when he was CIDG chief in Region 4A.
“These bloody trails of funds and government personnel all lead to State policies of the Duterte administration – a long observed view of various human rights groups and advocates. Indeed, these are not random acts of scalawags within State institutions such as the police. There is a method to the madness of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations – all defined in State operational plans and justified through the State machinery of impunity,” Palabay said. #
