Senators rapped for not taking Duterte to task

By: Germelina Lacorte - 11 years ago

Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte INQUIRER MINDANAO FILE PHOTO

DAVAO CITY, Philippines—The international watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern over some senators’ seeming acquiescence with Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s death threat against an alleged rice smuggler made during a Senate committee hearing last week, saying it would encourage impunity.

“Duterte’s threat was appalling. But equally disturbing was the lack of condemnation by the lawmakers,”said Carlos Conde, Philippine researcher for HRW Asia division.

Duterte had told a Senate hearing on Feb. 3 that he would “gladly kill” Davidson Bangayan, aka David Tan, who was seated a few feet away, if he caught him smuggling rice into Davao City.

Conde said the senators’ “tolerance” of Duterte “speaks volumes about the failure of successive Philippine governments to address the problem of extrajudicial killings in the country.”

He particularly cited the reaction of Sen. Cynthia Villar, chair of the Senate food and agriculture committee before which Duterte and Bangayan were called to testify.

“In Mindanao, you have to be tough because if not there will be several abuses,”Conde quoted Villar as saying, which made it appear that she was “sympathetic” to the way Duterte controlled crime in his city.

While Sen. Grace Poe “expressed concern about how children might misconstrue Duterte’s threat,” Conde said, she did not address his “affront to the rule of law.”

“Duterte is the embodiment of impunity in the Philippines,” Conde said.

“Legislators who ignore or, worse, seek to justify his abusive tactics not only insult the victims of such killings and their families, but also undermine efforts to bring them to an end,” he added.

He said Duterte’s comments were “no laughing matter,”because the Davao mayor, who is on his seventh term after two one-term breaks, has a “track record of threatening alleged hoodlums with deadly violence.”

“Duterte’s mayoralty coincided with the operation of death squads in the city that had killed hundreds of drug dealers, petty criminals and street children since 1998,”said Conde.

He said that in 2001 and 2002, Duterte would announce the names of “criminals”on local radio and television and some of those he named would later turn up dead, apparent victims of summary execution.

“No one has been successfully prosecuted for any of these murders,” Conde said. “In the meantime, the killings continue.”

HRW has repeatedly called the attention of the national government to the extrajudicial killings and killings with impunity that have been carried out in the country. Most of the killings were blamed on political warlords and their private armies in the countryside.

Conde said that although the number of killings had considerably gone down from the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in 2013 12 journalists were killed, bringing to 26 the total number of journalists and media workers killed since President Aquino took office in June 2010.