Former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte has decided not to attend today’s Quad Committee (Quadcomm) hearings at the House of Representatives, saying that the investigating committee should just refer to the transcript of the Senate hearing, where he made several self-incriminating statements.
Since members of the Quadcomm have announced that they have enough damning evidence against Duterte, his no-show at the House should send a signal to the congressmen to expand the scope of their investigation to include the other Duterte henchmen in his war on drugs.
More importantly, they must follow the murderous trail they have already uncovered and seriously look into the gaping reality that they have so far not acknowledged — an equally dirty war waged by Duterte that saw the extrajudicial killings of hundreds of activists and hors de combat.
Revelations at the Quadcomm hearings already point to the involvement of some of Duterte’s anti-drug henchmen in perpetrating human rights violations against activists and other human rights defenders.
The link is far from tenuous. For instance, Oplan Sauron, a bloody counter-insurgency operation jointly conducted by the military and police that was centered on Negros island was actually framed as an operational plan not just against rebel groups but criminals and individuals involved in the illegal drug trade. Oplan Sauron, however, did not target criminality and illegal drugs. It was a tightly coordinated military and police operation that brutalized unarmed civilians belonging to legitimate peasant groups. To justify the atrocities, the victims were falsely tagged by the military as members of the NPA.
It is high time that the Quadcomm takes a serious look at Duterte’s accountability for other state-sponsored killings that were very likely perpetrated by the same death squads funded by government monies.