Pubdate: Wed, 23 Mar 2005
Source: International Herald-Tribune (International)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2005
Contact:  http://www.iht.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/212
Author: Carlos H. Conde, International Herald Tribune
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Davao+Death+Squad
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/areas/Philippines

PHILIPPINE DEATH SQUADS EXTEND THEIR REACH

DAVAO CITY, Philippines Tears welled in Clarita Alia's eyes when she
saw the three unmarked tombs, one on top of each other. "There they
are," she said as she stretched out her trembling hand, almost
touching the cold, whitewashed concrete. "They're all gone."

"They" are Richard, Christopher and Bobby, three of Alia's eight
children who died one after the other at the hands of death squads in
this city.

Richard, 18, was the first to be killed, in 2001, followed by
Christopher, 16, that same year and Bobby, 14, the next year.

Their tombs in a hilltop cemetery are a testament, not only to the
anguish of their 50-year-old mother, but also to the madness that for
years has gripped Davao City, where death squads roam, hunting for
suspected criminals and killing them.

Human rights groups said the killings have become an unwritten
government policy to deal with crime, largely because of an
ineffective criminal justice system and the tendency of the
authorities to take shortcuts in the administration of justice.

What worries many Filipinos now is that the death squad phenomenon is
appearing in other parts of the country. "If you want to kill anybody
in the Philippines, now is the best time," Dante Jimenez, chairman of
Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, said bitterly in an
interview. His group has monitored the rise in extrajudicial killings
in at least half a dozen cities recently and expects the situation to
worsen.

It has never been established who the killers are, although there have
been reports that they are former Communist guerrillas hired to rid
cities of criminals, particularly drug pushers. In at least two cases,
survivors said their attackers had been police officers.

The execution-style killings in Davao City - 72 victims so far this
year, six of them children - are openly endorsed by local officials,
strengthening the long-running suspicion that the death squads were
formed by the government.

Although the mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, denied any responsibility in the
creation of the death squads, he ran for re-election last year on a
promise to eliminate criminals. The killings never stopped, and he has
repeatedly admonished criminals to leave his city or risk death.

Davao, a southern city with more than one million people, is one of
the country's highly urbanized cities. Its crime situation has been
affected by a recent increase in the number of gangs and street
children. Illegal drugs are common.

Bernie Mondragon, an official of the Coalition Against Summary
Executions, a nongovernment group, said extrajudicial killings "are
now the unwritten state policy in dealing with crime."

In January, when 34 people died and the killings were at their worst,
Davao's police force was chosen as the country's best for 2004. Yet
107 people were killed that year and, according to Amnesty
International, none of the 320 murders in the city since 1998 has been
solved.

Last year, in an act that human rights groups interpreted as an
endorsement by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of extrajudicial
killings, she named Duterte as her adviser on crime. When Arroyo was
later criticized, her officials said the government would never
support extrajudicial killings.

Leopoldo Bataoil, a spokesman for the national police, said that the
government treated extrajudicial killings as crimes and that it was
doing its best to stop them. "We will never tolerate vigilante
killings," he said in an interview.

The U.S. State Department reported on the killings in its human rights
report released last month, while Amnesty International denounced them
in January.

Extrajudicial killings were common in the Philippines during the
Marcos dictatorship, and have returned with ferocity in the last five
years.

Killers, usually working in tandem on a motorcycle, select victims who
are usually petty thieves such as cellphone snatchers or drug pushers.
Many victims are juvenile delinquents. In one case in Davao, a young
man accused of stealing a cellphone was shot to death just as he
stepped out of the police station.

Clarita Alia's children had had scrapes with the law. One had been
implicated in a murder, although the case had been dropped; another
had been accused of theft. But she denied that they had been criminals.

"Let's assume that they were criminals. Is killing them the answer?"
she asked. "Why is it so easy for the government to kill poor people
like my children? Where is due process?"

For many officials, due process is precisely the problem. "These
killings happen because the criminal justice system is not working,"
said Tomas Osmena, the mayor of Cebu City, a major city in the central
Philippines where dozens of suspected criminals have been killed since
the beginning of the year. Osmena complained about corruption in the
judiciary and the police.

"The criminal justice system is too tedious," said Conrado Laza, the
police chief of Davao. "Cases move slowly. So many complainants
probably just give up and take matters into their own hands and exact
revenge."

Defects in the judiciary have allowed death squads practically to
supplant the criminal justice system, said Pilgrim Guasa, coordinator
of Tambayan, a group that helps juvenile delinquents in Davao. Worse,
she said, the authorities "do not have any sense of accountability
whatsoever. They treat these killings as crime prevention, not crime
in itself, so they don't feel accountable."

When Osmena, the Cebu mayor, said this year that he wanted the police
"to be more aggressive" against crime, hunter teams emerged overnight
to hunt for suspected criminals.

While Osmena denied in an interview having any knowledge or official
sanctioning of those hunter teams, he admitted to having told law
enforcers that "if you encounter a crime in progress, don't be shy.
Pull the trigger and I'll give you a bonus."

Osmena said as a result of the vigilante killings, crime in Cebu had
gone down. He takes pride in the "very strong support by the public"
for these killings. "People congratulate me," he said.
- ---