Senate Justice committee Chair Leila De Lima tries to intervene between Senator Alan Peter Cayetano (right) and Senator Antonio Trillanes (left) during the Senate probe on alleged extrajudicial killings on Sept. 15, 2016. Trillanes and Cayetano had a confrontation over the questioning of witness Edgar Matobato, who claimed that President Rodrigo Duterte ordered killings committed by the Davao Death Squad or DDS. INQUIRER PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV now wants a separate Senate investigation into extrajudicial or summary killings committed by the alleged Davao Death Squad (DDS).
This after Edgar Matobato, who claimed to be a former DDS member, appeared before the Senate committee on justice and human rights last week and tagged President Rodrigo Duterte as behind the killings of criminals and enemies in Davao City when he was still the city mayor.
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In Senate Resolution 151, Trillanes urged the Senate committee on justice and human rights chaired by Senator Leila de Lima to conduct the investigation on the alleged DDS killings.
De Lima’s committee was also the lead committee investigating the reported sudden rise of alleged extrajudicial killings since the start of the Duterte administration. It was De Lima who presented Matobato in the last hearing.
The resolution claimed that the DDS was behind extrajudicial or summary killings in Davao since the mid-1990s, “which apparently persists until today.”
READ: ‘No new reso, no more Matobato’
It pointed out that from August 19, 1998, to February 1, 2009, the number of documented death squad killings reached 814, citing the records of the Coalition Against Summary Execution (CASE) and the Tambayan Center for the Care of Abused Children.
“Of these 814 case, 116 of which happened in 2007, 124 in 2008 and 33 in January 2009 alone,” the resolution said.
Another report, it said, showed that the number of DDS victims from 1998 to 2015 had reached 1,424.
The resolution likewise noted the public hearings conducted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in Davao City in 2009 with regard to the alleged 206 deaths “attributable” to the DDS from 2005 to 2009.
The CHR, the resolution said, “found a distinct pattern” of killings which identified victims as “usually involved or suspected to have been involved” in illegal activities.
It was De Lima who led that investigation on the alleged DDS killings when she was still CHR head.
Based on the Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organization, the DDS victims allegedly included minors and that there were also cases of mistaken identity.
“Extrajudicial or summary killing actually constitutes the crime of homicide and when carried our premeditatedly, it becomes murder,” the resolution said.
“These killings do not signify justice and a successful crackdown on crimes but indicate a breakdown in law and order,” it added.
The continuing pattern of killings and the failure of the authorities to stop the same, and to conduct meaningful investigations of such incidents, the resolution said, “can be construed as tolerance on the part of authorities of the crimes thereby contributing to the climate of impunity.”/rga
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