The Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA), an organization of former political prisoners, is resolutely against another Senate term for Duterte minions Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and Christopher “Bong” Go.
Bato dela Rosa and Bong Go have toadied to their master Rodrigo Duterte for decades, publicly supporting his repressive policies that have resulted in illegal arrests, political imprisonment and grave human rights violations.
Dela Rosa has had a lot of practice in the matter of repression. As a young lieutenant in 1986 in the now defunct Philippine Constabulary in Davao City, Dela Rosa was the chief handler of the anti-communist religious cult known as the Tadtad. The Tadtad was infamous for beheading suspected communist sympathizers.
With this kind of background, Bato dela Rosa’s role as Duterte’s police chief involved not only being the architect of Oplan Tokhang and its iterations like Oplan Double Barrel and Double Barrel Reloaded but enforcing the Duterte regime’s counter-insurgency policies. In 2018, he lauded Duterte’s decision to wage all-out war, scuttle the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and stop declaring ceasefires with the New People’s Army (NPA).
After Duterte backed him as a senatorial candidate in the 2019 elections, Dela Rosa went on to do his master’s bidding by sponsoring repressive legislation like the restoration of the death penalty and mandatory ROTC for college students. He also called for the institutionalization of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and amendments to the Party-list System Act to disqualify red-tagged partylist groups.
He pushed for the harassment and red-tagging of youth activists by calling on schools to profile students who may be “vulnerable to recruitment” by the NPA. Just last April, he applauded a man who tore up campaign materials for Kabataan Partylist that he seized from youth who were peacefully distributing them in Davao City. By encouraging harassment and red-tagging, he endangers the victims and sets them up for more serious human rights violations.
As for Bong Go, he has not only served as Duterte’s gofer and bagman. He, along with Bato dela Rosa, were among the senators who voted to pass the Anti-Terrorism Law that is now being weaponized against activists and other dissenters and has been used to justify the detention of at least 45 individuals. Bong Go has gone on record defending Duterte’s red-baiting. He supported Duterte’s orders to the military to “flatten the hills” and close down Lumad schools. He also lambasted United Nations special rapporteur Irene Khan for urging the repeal of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Testimonies at the Quadcom hearings indicate that Bong Go not only disbursed monies on Duterte’s orders to incentivize the death squads to continue perpetrating the drug war killings. With the same police officials involved in the extrajudicial killings of activists, Go, in all likelihood, gave out reward money to them as well for political killings.
Bong Go and Bato dela Rosa’s major roles in the Duterte drug war have come back to haunt them as more damning evidence of their place in Duterte’s death squads was revealed during the Quadcom hearings in Congress. Both of these Duterte sycophants are reportedly on the list of persons to be ordered arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the near future for being co-conspirators in the bloody drug war.
SELDA demands that they be held accountable as well for their roles in supporting policies that have led to the extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, unjust arrest, detention and torture of hundreds of civilians.
SELDA avers that Dela Rosa and Go belong in an ICC jail cell with their long-time master, awaiting trial for their crimes, and not in the halls of the Senate. #