Human rights alliance Karapatan took strong exception to claims by the Philippine National Police that the recent conviction of a Caloocan City policeman for torture and planting of evidence in relation a five-year old drug war-related killing forms proof that “the Philippine justice system is working.” The murder cases filed against the policeman, PO1 Jeffrey Perez, for the August 2017 killing of 19-year old Carl Angelo Arnaiz and 14-year old Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman are still pending in court.
“The only thing this recent conviction proves,” said Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay, “is that there were human rights violations during the drug war. This should not be used by authorities to make what is obviously a false statement—that the Philippine justice system is working.”
Human rights alliance Karapatan took strong exception to claims by the Philippine National Police that the recent conviction of a Caloocan City policeman for torture and planting of evidence in relation a five-year old drug war-related killing forms proof that “the Philippine justice system is working.” The murder cases filed against the policeman, PO1 Jeffrey Perez, for the August 2017 killing of 19-year old Carl Angelo Arnaiz and 14-year old Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman are still pending in court.
“The only thing this recent conviction proves,” said Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay, “is that there were human rights violations during the drug war. This should not be used by authorities to make what is obviously a false statement—that the Philippine justice system is working.”
This case is a drop in the bucket, said Palabay. “It is only one out of thousands of cases of extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations in the drug war and in the other repressive and murderous campaigns of the past Duterte regime.” Government authorities admit to about 6,200 suspected drug personalities killed in official police anti-drug operations, but estimates by independent sources point to as many as 20,000 to 30,000 killed, including those gunned down by state-sanctioned or -controlled vigilante groups.
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan made the same point in his stand to pursue investigations into the drug war killings in the Philippines. “Nothing in the observations nor in the hundreds of pages of associated annexes (submitted by the Philippine government) substantiates that criminal proceedings actually have been or are being conducted in anything more than a small number of cases,” he said. Khan added that “there were neither criminal probes into war on drugs-related killings in Davao, nor into vigilante killings or war on drugs-related torture, from 2011 to 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte was either mayor or vice mayor of Davao.”
More importantly, said Palabay, only foot soldiers, not those who issued orders or directives on the drug war, and abetted and allowed the conduct of such police operations, have been made accountable. She noted that hours before the notorious killing of 17-year old Kian delos Santos on August 16, 2017, and two days before Arnaiz and de Guzman were tortured and killed, Duterte practically assured policemen that should they be convicted for following his orders to kill drug suspects, he would pardon or grant amnesty to them, or even promote them. “Sure enough,” said Palabay, “policemen, smug and emboldened by their commander-in-chief’s promises that he had their back, dragged Kian delos Santos in full view of CCTV cameras before shooting him dead in an alley.”
“The 2018 conviction of Kian delos Santos’ killers, which is still under appeal, is the other case that Philippine authorities like to crow about in claiming a functioning justice system,” said Palabay.
“These pitiful statistics show why the international community, which includes the International Criminal Court Pre-Trial Chamber and the UN Human Rights Council, should act decisively. Domestic mechanisms are not enough to hold all perpetrators, especially the high-ranking government officials accountable,” she concluded.