MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has recommended to the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate the possible administrative and criminal liability of former Davao City mayor, now Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, for his alleged inaction in the numerous killings of the so-called Davao Death Squad during his term.
CHR chairperson Loretta Ann Rosales said 206 killings took place in Davao City from 2005 to 2009, and the search for accountability for these continues.
“Dead bodies were piling up in Davao City during that time, consisting mainly of addicts, drug pushers and thieves and young people with police records for petty crimes. A number of them were minors. There was growing public and official concern, inside and outside the country,” Rosales said.
The CHR, then headed by now Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, decided to conduct an investigation into the killings on its own, in accordance with its constitutional mandate.
The CHR said there was a “systematic failure on the part of the local officials to conduct any meaningful investigation” into these killings.
In particular, it said Duterte, then the mayor, “had clearly disregarded information of alleged violation of the right to life committed in Davao City, and had not acted thereon.”
The CHR said the killings “constituted a systematic practice of extrajudicial killings, which can be attributed or attributable to the media-dubbed Davao Death Squad.”
“These killings were arbitrary and rampant violations of the victims’ right to life, the most fundamental of all human rights. This right is guaranteed and protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights with the clear injunction that ‘no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.’ Our own Constitution provides that ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,’” it added.