CHR holds rally vs summary killings in Davao

DAVAO CITY—The government-sponsored protest rally against summary killings here on Wednesday was not just for show, the head of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in Southern Mindanao said.

On Wednesday, CHR mobilized about 5,000 people from the academe, the religious sector and other groups, to call for a stop to summary killings in the city.

The number of dead continues to grow as militant groups said they lost track of how many people have been killed since the killings started in the 1990s.

Based on police figures, however, at least 52 cases of attacks on suspected criminals occurred in the city since January alone.

The killings were mainly attributed to the shadowy Davao Death Squad (DDS), the same group that the CHR investigated for the deaths of more than 1,000 mostly drug suspects from 1998 to 2009.

Alberto Sipaco, CHR director, said the protest was “principally aimed at stirring public vigilance.”

“We have known that these incidents of summary killings have been rising all this time and for almost two decades now, these killings have not been solved,” he said.

Fr. Daniel McNamara, of the Ateneo de Davao University, supported the CHR-sponsored rally.

He said the rally wasn’t aimed at only promoting awareness but also to encourage “people to come forward” and be part of the fight to stop the senseless killings. The Church will always be prolife, he said.

Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who is being linked to the killings, has branded the DDS as a myth.

Duterte, who has repeatedly said that criminals have no place in the city, said the killings could be the result of gang rivalries.

When he learned the CHR was planning to launch a protest rally against summary killings last month, Duterte questioned the agency’s fairness.

“Where is fairness there? It should not have been sponsored by a government agency. There goes the problem,” he said.

Duterte said he was worried that the CHR-led rally would be used by other human rights groups to attack government. Instead of holding the rally, Duterte said it was better to put measures in place to stop the killings.

“Instead of going into that rigmarole, why don’t you go with a neutral mind (sic) because all killings are summary killings. To whom (sic) are you addressing the indignation rally? Time is better spent coming up with worthy measures to control summary killings,” he said.

Franchie Buhayan, secretary general of Bayan in southern Mindanao, said while her group welcomed the CHR-led protest, it wanted to remind the agency that “the state of impunity emanates not merely from the lack of public awareness.”

“Rather because the perpetrators are virtually scot-free, freely abetted by the failure of government bodies to hold the perpetrators accountable,” she said in an e-mail statement.

Buhayan said blame also rests on CHR because it was ineffective in dealing with cases of extrajudicial killings.

“It is partly to blame for the reigning culture of impunity which permeates our society,” she said.

“As long as CHR remains inutile over these cases of human rights violations, we can expect further delay of justice,” Buhayan said.

She said unless the CHR “rolls up its sleeves and show some real work,” Wednesday’s rally “would merely be an empty display of human rights rhetoric and hollow advocacy.” Dennis Santos and Allan Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao