Promoting Metro Manila police chief Debold Sinas shows “not only a glaring double standard of justice and law enforcement in the country but how this fascist regime shamelessly coddles and rewards human rights violators,” human rights watchdog Karapatan asserted, as the group assailed Philippine National Police chief Camilo Cascolan’s proposals to promote Sinas to a higher post.
Promoting Metro Manila police chief Debold Sinas shows “not only a glaring double standard of justice and law enforcement in the country but how this fascist regime shamelessly coddles and rewards human rights violators,” human rights watchdog Karapatan asserted, as the group assailed Philippine National Police chief Camilo Cascolan’s proposals to promote Sinas to a higher post.
“Debold Sinas is not just some makapal ang mukha, pasaway police officer — and he won’t get punished and could even shamelessly get a promotion precisely because he is one of the most trusted butchers of this murderous regime, as proven by his bloody track record since his stint as the former regional director of the Central Visayas Police Regional Office,” Karapatan Deputy Secretary General Roneo Clamor said.
Clamor further stated that “violating quarantine protocols in holding his mañanita while hypocritically vilifying and penalizing the poor and the activists isn’t even his greatest sin: Sinas is a human rights violator who oversaw police operations that led to gruesome crimes in the sham drug war and in the counterinsurgency campaign in Central Visayas which have yet to be investigated. It doesn’t come as a surprise that President Rodrigo Duterte has outrightly defended him amid calls for his resignation: the president himself protects and guarantees immunity for his men.”
During Sinas’s stint as the Central Visayas Police Regional Office director from July 2018 to October 2019, the Central Visayas office of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR-7), noted that drug-related killings as well as complaints of police brutality and misconduct increased in the region under Sinas’ watch. Parallel and independent investigations into these killings were also actively blocked.
“Sinas was also one of the architects of Oplan Sauron, the intensified counterinsurgency campaign of the police and the military in Negros under Memorandum Order No. 32, which has led to the spate of violence, killings, and arrests of farmers and activists in the island and now he seems to be intent in further unleashing this terror here in Metro Manila,” the Karapatan officer continued.
“The fact that proposals to promote Sinas are being blatantly made and the fact that the president himself has protected him belie all the claims made by the government that domestic mechanisms are working to hold human rights violators accountable; on the contrary, the State turns a blind eye on their violations of the law and they are being promoted and rewarded as they meet their kill quotas. Sinas is a human rights violator that does not deserve any promotion. The only thing he deserves is to be prosecuted and held accountable for his attacks against the people,” he ended.