MANILA, Philippines?To the Philippines? chief human rights watchdog, it is nothing less than ?selective vigilantism??a brand of street justice where assassins mainly target suspected criminal offenders belonging to poor families.

That was how Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chair Leila de Lima described the activities of the ?Davao Death Squad,? which the agency investigated during an unprecedented public inquiry last week in Davao City, where the group operates.

?I share the observation that no big-time criminals, like drug lords or rich drug pushers and drug users, appear to be among the victims of the so-called Davao Death Squad,? De Lima said in a statement Sunday. ?Only petty thieves, gang members and drug users from poor families are.?

?Such selective vigilantism, or ?street justice,? is an intriguing facet of the Davao Death Squad phenomenon,? De Lima said.

In an interview after the Davao inquiry, she said that it appeared the ?targets were [the] poor, helpless D-E class.?

She wondered: ?There?s discrimination even in this case? Is it only the poor who use drugs??

One study shows that almost all the minors allegedly killed by the group since 1998 were ?street children or urban living and working children.?

?A significant number of young adults were former street children and gang members,? says the study released to the Philippine Daily Inquirer by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), a Hong Kong-based, nongovernmental organization of lawyers, priests and other professionals founded by jurists and other civil libertarians in Asia.

Founded in 1986, the group seeks to promote greater awareness of protecting human rights in the region.

Back to Duterte country

The CHR will return to Davao City on April 17 to continue its probe into the existence of the deadly, shadowy group blamed for more than 800 unsolved killings of suspected criminals or people who have served time since 1998.

In an earlier interview, De Lima said that barangay (village) captains in areas where there has been a concentration of unexplained killings will be invited to the public inquiry.

Davao?s city government, led by Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and the local police, have denied the existence of any death squad, blaming the killings on gang wars.

The CHR said that if this was so, then Davao City was not the epitome of peace and order that its local officials had touted it to be as the killings happened almost daily and the perpetrators had gone unpunished.

Support for CHR

The Philippine Coalition for the International Criminal Court (PCICC) Sunday pledged its support to the CHR?s efforts to put an end to the vigilante-style killings.

In a statement, former party-list Rep. Etta Rosales, PCICC co-chair, said the coalition would ?mobilize the human rights community, the academe, and human rights lawyers? within its network to help in the campaign.

The PCICC also backed De Lima?s stand that Duterte, being the mayor, and the local government should be held responsible for the unabated killings.

?Whether or not Duterte sanctioned the killings is only one side of the coin,? Rosales said. ?The other side concerns his recognition of the killings, whether or not he does something once he recognizes their existence. The fact that he does nothing to stop the summary executions makes him accountable as Davao City?s Chief Executive from the perspective of command responsibility, a UN-defined universal principle that exacts accountable leadership.?

The PCICC also urged the CHR to expand its investigation to include the cities of Dumaguete, Cebu, General Santos and Digos, where ?summary killings are starting to spread like wildfire, eroding further an already flawed and corrupted criminal justice system.?

The PCICC is a broad-based coalition of human rights groups working to strengthen the Philippine criminal justice system through ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Stop media killings

Nacionalista Party president Manny Villar Sunday called on the national government to take appropriate measures to speedily resolve murder cases in which media people have been the victims.

?It is very troubling that despite the constitutional guarantee on freedom of expression, killings of members of the media have (hit) a record high of 100 since 1999, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines,? Villar said as he filed Senate Resolution No. 954.

The resolution noted that, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Philippines ranks 6th out of 14 countries in the 2009 Global Impunity Index, with an impunity index rating of 0.289 unsolved murders of journalists per one million inhabitants.

The CPJ is a US-based nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to stop harassment of journalists by authoritarian governments. In 1992, it began compiling records of journalists killed in the line of duty, including those in the Philippines.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) reported that since 2001, a total of 26 cases of media killings have been filed in court but only two resulted in convictions.

?The assaults on journalists are becoming more brazen,? Villar said. ?(These) do not only suppress press freedom but (also the) freedom of expression and the people?s right to know as well. The crisis ? has reached an intolerable level and must be addressed urgently,? Villar said.