We don’t sanction drug killings, says Malacañang

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (L) talks to Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Ronald Dela Rosa (R). AFP FILE PHOTO

The Duterte administration has not condoned the operations of the “Davao Boys,” Malacañang said on Thursday, in response to a Reuters special report on a squad of police officers from Davao City that proved to be the most lethal in Quezon City during the first year of President Duterte’s war on drugs.

Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa on Wednesday defended the policemen from Davao City, President Duterte’s hometown, saying the officers fired only in self-defense and the death toll reflected the danger and the scale of the drug problem at Police Station 6 in Quezon City.

Dela Rosa also stood by the leader of the squad, Supt. Lito Patay, whom he had handpicked to head the QCPD Station 6 because he was a “very professional” and “very dedicated” officer capable of dealing with the drug problem in the district.

108 kills

Station 6 officers killed 108 people in drug raids from July 2016 through June 2017, the drug war’s first year, accounting for 39 percent of Quezon City’s body count, according to official crime reports analyzed by Reuters.

A majority of the killings were carried out by the antidrug squad run by Patay, who was reassigned to Quezon City just a few weeks after Mr. Duterte unleashed his crackdown on narcotics.

“He (Patay) was chosen because I have big trust in him, he has the balls to face the problems. He will fight,” Dela Rosa told reporters.

“He is not an officer who is after money, who will be assigned in an area only to collect money. He is not that kind of officer. He has focus. I assigned him there because I know he can deliver,” the police chief said.

A survivor and the relatives of three men shot dead by the Davao Boys during a drug raid in Barangay Payatas last year had brought a petition for the writ of amparo (protection) in the Supreme Court, asking the tribunal to bar the PNP from carrying out the drug war in the village.

No opposition

The court granted the plea on Jan. 31, ordering Dela Rosa and his men not to come within a kilometer of the petitioners’ homes and directing the Court of Appeals to hear the petition.

The appeals court issued a permanent protection for the petitioners on Feb. 10.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Thursday that the administration did not oppose the petition, proof that it had not condoned the operations of the Davao Boys.

By not blocking the petition, the administration agreed with it, Roque said.

“So the response is we’re not taking it sitting down. [The] government, when that petition for (the writ of) amparo was filed in the Supreme Court, did not oppose the petition and that’s why the Supreme Court issued the writ of amparo,” he said in a news briefing.

“So question: Is the government sanctioning the alleged operations of this Davao group? Clearly not because in that petition, [the] government did not oppose it. In effect, [the] government agreed with the allegations of the petition and that’s why there was a writ of protection issued,” he said.

Roque said it was the state’s obligation to “investigate, punish, prosecute and give the victims adequate domestic legal remedy,” and it did so by not opposing the petition for a protection order.

The order includes the duty to investigate alleged perpetrators of human rights violations, he added.

“If a writ of amparo will not provide for criminal sanctions against the respondents, what it will do is it will prompt the respondents to investigate, and the PNP right now is under obligation to investigate and confirm the reports of the petitioners in that writ of amparo,” he said.

‘Bad journalism’

Roque blasted Reuters again, accusing the international news agency of “bad journalism.”

The Reuters reporter would have known about the protection order if she had checked the facts, he said.

Roque also reiterated his complaint about being given a one-hour “ultimatum” to comment on the Reuters report on Tuesday when he was about to conduct his regular press briefing.

He said he planned to write to Reuters to complain.

“You don’t write a story and give [the] government a timeline to respond, otherwise, they will go ahead and publish a story. I thought that was really foul,” he said.

Reuters questions

Reuters sent questions to Malacañang for the report last week.

In a statement, Reuters denied on Thursday that it gave Malacañang just an hour to answer the questions.

“Reuters sent questions to the President’s office a week before the story was published and the President’s office confirmed it had received them. Reuters followed that up with phone calls and e-mails, but the President’s office never responded to our questions,” it said.

Assistant Presidential Communications Secretary Rachel Rodulfo, in her message to Malacañang’s Viber thread with the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines, said Reuters’ Claire Baldwin insisted on Tuesday that the Palace answer the questions within an hour.

Rodulfo said she told Baldwin that the Palace would reply, but its officials would need to confer. The answers would be given early the next day, she said.

She said she asked for time to answer the questions because the Palace was busy with pressing matters, including responding to Tropical Storm “Urduja” (international name: Kai-tak)

Rodulfo said Baldwin told her that the editor needed to write the report by 12 noon and would just put there that the Palace did not comment.

Actually, Malacañang wanted to comment and just needed time to do so, she said.