MANILA, Philippines — The United States flagged the “significant problem” of impunity within Philippine security forces amid a spate of “unlawful and arbitrary” killings of activists, judicial officials, local government leaders, journalists and drug suspects.
“There was a widespread belief that police enjoyed impunity for killings,” the US State Department said in its annual report on the state of human rights in the Philippines released Wednesday.
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It also noted that many cases of killings involving the police have remained unsolved and that the Philippine government investigated a “limited number” of reported human rights abuses.
For one, the US State Department said, the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ own human rights office did not identify or investigate any extrajudicial killings, murders or forced disappearances from January 2020 to October 2020.
The US State Department also highlighted the “continued attacks” on human rights defenders, citing the killings of peace consultant Randall Echanis and human rights activist Zara Alvarez.
No impunity?
President Rodrigo Duterte has often come to the defense of uniformed personnel and guaranteed their protection from prosecution whenever they land in hot water for alleged abuses.
The Philippine National Police has denied that there is a culture of violence and impunity within its ranks and insisted that documented abuses committed by its personnel are isolated incidents.
The US State Department, however, concluded that “members of the security forces committed numerous abuses.”
“Civil society organizations accused police of planting evidence, tampering with crime scenes, unlawfully disposing of the bodies of drug suspects, and other actions to cover up extrajudicial killings,” it said in its report.
Among the abuses cited in the report is the police’s alleged planting of evidence in the fatal shooting of Winston Ragos, a former soldier who suffered from a mental illness accused of violating quarantine protocols.
The report also cited the killing of nine unarmed Muslim men in Kabacan, Cotabato allegedly in the hands of the police.
The Philippine Commission on Human Rights, the report said, also suspect that the police or anti-narcotics agents were involved in 61 complaints of extrajudicial killings.
The report was published amid a string of killings that have recently targeted unarmed civilian activists who have been red-tagged, or accused of being affiliated with the underground armed communist rebellion.