![]() If she is serious about shutting them down, “now is the time for her to speak out, press for prosecutions, and announce measures to help victims’ families.”ĭavao women hold photographs of missing or dead sonsĭeath squads are not new in The Philippines and go back at least to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, whose supporters in the army and police often preferred to kill opponents than negotiate with them. “In the face of evidence pointing to local government involvement in these murders, President Arroyo’s continued silence could be seen as tacit acceptance of death squad killings,” Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of HRW said in a statement this year. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who once appointed Duterte as an advisor on peace and order, has “largely turned a blind eye” to the murders, claims Human Rights Watch (HRW). Executions have also been reported in the troubled holiday resort of Cebu and in Manila. Police officers in collusion with local city governments across the southern island of Mindanao are involved in the targeted killings – known in the local press as “salvagings” and “rub-outs,” say human rights groups. Activists, trade unionists and newspaper reporters have been added to the assassins’ lists only Iraq is a more dangerous place for journalists, says the France-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Other leaders are copying Mayor Duterte.” In several cities, including the capital Manila, politicians have praised Davao’s style of rough justice. “The problem is now all over the country. Officially sanctioned vigilantism is spreading as the country’s economic woes deepen, warns Edith Casiple, Tambayan’s executive director. “Impunity for such crimes is almost total,” it adds. The killers escape arrest thanks to the tolerance and sometimes “outright support of the local authorities,” says a new report on the killings on Davao’s Death Squads by the US-based Human Rights Watch. The youngest victim was 12 years old.Īnd the pace of killings is increasing: 57 people were stabbed or shot in the first three months of this year alone, up from 2 in the whole of 1998. It is the only organization keeping a systematic account of the executions. Vigilantes have murdered 894 people in the last decade, including at least 80 minors, according to the Tambayan Center for Children’s Rights, a Christian NGO that operates in Davao’s city center. “If you are doing an illegal activity in my city, if you are a criminal or part of a syndicate that preys on the innocent people of the city, for as long as I am the mayor, you are a legitimate target of assassination.” Duterte, says the Philippine Daily Enquirer, rules over a city “with the highest number of gangland-style killings in the country.”Ĭondemnation and press coverage has failed to stop summary executions of what Mayor Duterte calls “society’s garbage,” Davao’s own slum dogs: alleged petty drug dealers, young toughs and street children. “What I want to do it so instill fear,” he told reporters in February. Mayor Rodrigo Duterte boasts that he has made this the safest urban zone in the country, but Davao’s motto: ‘love, peace and progress’ is belied by an ugly killing spree that has claimed nearly 900 lives, including dozens of children. Below, the city of 1.3 million people, a tourist hub for some of the most spectacular scenery in Southeast Asia, sprawls toward the Pacific. Insects hum in the humid tranquility of this pauper’s graveyard. She believes they were murdered by police-run death squads. I’m already old.”Ĭlarita Alia in the paupers graveyard where her four sons are buried. ![]() “They may kill me too, but I am not afraid to die. “The police said, ‘We will take your sons one by one,’” recalls the 54-year-old grandmother at the graveside of her murdered brood in the southern Philippines city of Davao, the largest city in Mindanao. ![]() And far from protecting her shattered family, it is the police who are behind the killings, she says. Now Clarita Alia lives in fear that Arnold, her last remaining son is next. Bobby was taken from her the following year, and Fernando in 2007. First was Richard in 2001, then his brother Christopher. They came to kill her children one by one. Police death squads are out of control in The Philippines say human rights campaigners, murdering slum children, the poor and political enemies with impunity.
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