KARAPATAN has followed up Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla’s latest pronouncements of an intersection between the perpetrators of the drug war-related killings and the abductors and likely murderers of the “missing sabungeros,” saying that “these may be the same people involved in the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of activists.”
Information disclosed by a whistleblower to the Department of Justice implicates 15 police personnel in the abduction of 34 sabungeros between April 2021 to January 2022. According to Remulla, some of these policemen had already been implicated in the vigilante-style killings of drug suspects under the Duterte regime.
KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay noted that police officials like Debold Sinas, Lito Patay and Romeo Caramat who reportedly led operations that led to the mass murders of drug suspects were also at the helm of schemes like Oplan Sauron in Negros and the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Southern Tagalog that resulted in the extrajudicial killings of scores of activists.
“What is laid bare before the public is the long-renowned role of the police as the political elite’s private army, made to do their bidding in conducting extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations for their interests,” she stated.
The missing sabungeros were reportedly abducted and eliminated for rigging e-sabong, causing its operator Charlie “Atong” Ang to lose profits, and Duterte’s government to potentially lose billions in revenues. Duterte, who once said he hated gambling, legalized e-sabong in late 2020, turning it into a state-enabled enterprise that eventually spanned 14 regions of the country by 2021 and reportedly netted his government Php640 million a month. A significant portion of these revenues went to the “presidential social fund,” essentially a pork barrel item that Duterte spent on his “priority projects.”
KARAPATAN urged the Justice Department to look into all cases of enforced disappearances, including the 20 victims of enforced disappearance documented by the human rights during the Duterte administration and the 15 desaparecidos under the Marcos administration.