MANILA, Philippines — A human rights group on Thursday urged the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and lawmakers to investigate the accusations hurled at the Dutertes by retired policeman Arturo Lascañas.
While speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Lascañas alleged that the brutal “Oplan Tokhang,” the government’s war on drugs that claimed thousands of lives, was actually the brainchild of now Vice President and then-Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte.
The retired cop is a confessed gunman for the supposed Davao Death Squad (DDS) – a group of policemen who allegedly carried out Oplan Tokhang during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s time as Davao mayor.
READ: Ex-cop links Duterte siblings Paolo and Sara to ‘drug war’ dirt
“It is high time that these revelations […] be seriously investigated through Philippine domestic mechanisms,” rights group Karapatan said in a statement.
“For the sake of the victims, who number in the tens of thousands, the investigations must exact justice and accountability from the perpetrators,” it added.
The number of victims killed during the Duterte administration’s war on drugs is still under debate.
The government tally on drug war deaths sits at over 6,000, but the rights organization Human Rights Watch puts the number closer to 12,000.
Lascañas, along with fellow confessed gunman Edgar Matobato, has time and again spoken to members of the media to narrate how the former president and some members of his family allegedly orchestrated Oplan Tokhang.
“Karapatan asserts that with these whistleblowers reiterating their revelations in a number of media interviews, the CHR and the congressional human rights committees must fulfill their mandates by finally getting to the bottom of the DDS and other drug war-related killings since Duterte was Davao City mayor up to the time he became president,” the group continued.
Karapatan’s statement comes amid former senator Antonio Trillanes IV’s claims that investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) were in the country in December last year to gather evidence against the former president.
But on January 23, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. stressed that the Philippine government would not assist the ICC’s investigation.
READ: Marcos: PH won’t assist ICC probe