Duterte death squad fears rise as cops kill 8

Presumptive President-elect Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER MINDANAO PHOTO

Police shot dead eight drug suspects this week, authorities said on Saturday, following repeated calls by presumptive President-elect Rodrigo Duterte for security forces to kill criminals.

Gunmen on motorcycles also murdered three petty criminals in Duterte’s hometown of Davao, police said, deepening fears of mass extrajudicial killings once the controversial politician begins his six-year term on June 30.

Police insisted the eight drug suspects were killed lawfully, with the officers firing back only after being shot at in three separate raids. One occurred in Manila, another near the capital and the third in a small town in the North.

“There is no new policy to kill drug suspects. We have our rules of engagement and respect their human rights,” said Insp. Teresita Escamillan, police spokesperson for the Manila district where two of the suspects were killed.

When asked for comment, national police spokesperson Wilben Mayor said all officers “appeared” to follow operational procedures on the use of force, based on the reports sent to headquarters in Manila.

Such deaths are not unusual in a nation where the police force has a track record of extrajudicial killings, and show the danger of the situation getting much worse under Duterte, according to rights group Amnesty International.

“We fear an erosion of the rule of law. Once that happens, the Philippines will become a Wild West and become totally ungovernable,” Wilnor Papa, campaign coordinator for Amnesty’s Philippine office, told Agence France-Presee (AFP).

Duterte won this month’s elections in a landslide largely on an incendiary law-and-order platform headlined by a vow to wipe out crime within six months.

Rights group say the death squads have killed more than 1,000 people, including children and petty criminals, and that no-one has been brought to justice for those deaths.

Three suspected petty criminals were killed in a single attack on Wednesday in Davao, according to the city’s police spokesperson, Senior Inspector Milgrace Driz.

Up to five gunmen on motorcycles attacked the men on a street near a school, Driz said.

“Police records show these men were pickpockets and burgled cars,” Driz said, adding the deaths could have been due to gang warfare.

When asked if the so-called Davao Death Squads could have been responsible, she described them as a “myth.”  “They don’t exist, it is only you journalists who say they exist,” she said.