Only Honest Police and Judges will End Death Squads
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By: Father Shay
The streets of Davao City, the second largest in the Philippines are silent these nights. It is the silence of the grave for 58 victims of the Davao Death squad this year alone. Last year, 99 met a brutal and sudden death when the motorbike riding black-garbed killers hunted them down and shot in cold blood. Most were surely innocent of any crime and many were teenagers and street youth.
More recently, skeletal remains of at least a dozen victims men, women and children were discovered in shallow graves of a Davao police firing range. Neighbours said they thought that the late night gunfire was a police shooting practice. A culture of fear over the city induces either a deadly silence or nervous approval. Few have spoken against it.
The reluctance of the police to investigate or bring a single suspect to account seems more like the silence of approval. The Davao police chief Supt. Conrado Laza said recently, that the crime rate had dropped 15 percent from June to July this year because of the killings. Many understood this as a veiled justification of the summary executions.
While the church is totally against the death penalty and advocates itıs abolition, the activities of the death squad have almost gone without comment or condemnation. That is another hurtful silence.
These killings have all the signs of extra judicial executions and are far worse because the victims are never charged with a crime, have no evidence against them, they see no day in court and have no chance of due process to prove their innocence. As the bodies pile up, the silence of officials grows deeper. Now after years of street executions during which more than a hundred people were killed including children, the executioners show no fear of shooting down civilians in broad daylight.
Last July 23, the vigilante death squad struck again their victims without warning in the most normal of places. One 35 year-old man was returning home after bringing his 7 year-old son to the elementary school at 7 Am. He was shot dead within sight of his house.
A short while later two more men in there 50s were in a private house playing chess when the killers barged in and shot them to death. Several killings followed the announcement of Davao Mayor Rosario Duterte that his patience against gangsterism had run out, it sounded like ominous death sentence. Then apparently, the killers were unleashed by persons unknown.
One man Victor Pormento, 42, of Camus Street was playing billiards when the squad suddenly showed up, chased him through the house in a terrifying ordeal and shot him dead. Rolando Custodio the owner of several lower shops was hunted like a prey and cornered in a canteen where he was gunned down before terrified customers.
The mayor often goes on radio and television to read out the names of criminal suspects that he warns and threatens. Later some of them are shot dead. Duterte has repeatedly said that he has nothing to do with the death squads although he admits in interviews that he enjoys riding about heavily armed on a Harley Davison motorbike himself. The victims are allegedly drug pushers. But anybody can point a finger and make false accusations. In Davao, that can be a death sentence and result in a bloody execution. Nobody is safe.
In 2002, the PREDA Foundation launched a international letter writing protesting the killing and was sued by the former mayor for libel although he was never accused of involvement. The case against us was dismissed after a year of dangerous living. When I flew in for a court hearing, I was met by a banner-waving crowd of street children and social workers who escorted me safely to the city, lest I be shot on the way.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo instead of condemning the murders and distancing herself from the bloody mayhem has embraced it as her own favoured method of keeping law and order. She appointed mayor Duterte a national security advisor for his success in reducing crime in Davao City.
A senior official of the influential Filipino-Chinese chamber of commerce, Uy Ching Siong said last week that the business people in Davao were elated at the killings because they had helped reduce the level of crime. The summary executions have created a good climate for business, “these killings are good for the city” he said. Edmundo Acaylar, city tourism officer said that the summary executions were having no bad effect on tourism. The city is safe because “criminals are killed”, he said.
The president declared that her administration will adhere to the rule of law establish a new Presidential commission on values formation for government officials. She needs to start in Davao.
However what we need in the Philippines is not another commission but honest well-trained police and an honest judiciary. So long as these are absent, there will be rivers of blood in Davao and elsewhere as killers roam with impunity. In such a regime there can be no genuine peace or stability.[End.]
