DAVAO CITY -- The Human Rights Watch, along with Amnesty International, extrapolated death statistics surrounding the bloody internal purge in the ranks of the New Peoples Army, drug-related casualties and other criminal elements that sow terror in Davao region. Long before Duterte entered the political arena, Davao City was already dubbed as the “killing field” of the Philippines in obvious attribution to the mass slaughter in Cambodia in that decade.
In 2009, when the three-year term of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was coming to an end, then Congressman Prospero Nograles passed a resolution urging the Commission of Human Rights, then chaired by Leila de Lima, to conduct a probe of alleged extra-judicial killings in the city. De Lima herself led the investigation. She tucked along a probe team made up of National Bureau of Investigation agents and investigators from the Philippine National Police. None of the members of the probe team was recruited from the regional NBI and PNP headquarters. Warrants and summons were obtained from the Regional Trial Courts in Metro Manila based on her flimsy claims that members of the judiciary in Davao City were scared of DDS and Duterte.
Mayor Duterte took a leave of absence and surrendered his supervisory power of the local PNP during the probe. He told the media that he is giving CHR Chair de Lima and her probe team the freedom to investigate. The mayor himself was grilled by de Lima in a series of public hearing which lasted for about six months.
Commission on Human Rights probe team led by Leila de Lima unearthed badly deteriorated skeletal remains and three pairs of license plates which did not show any corrosion. These were the evidence they had to prove that there were extra-judicial killings and that Davao Death Squad (DDS) carried out the crime.
Six months of grilling, diggings of suspected burial ground of EJK victims buried in an abandoned quarry and looking for the lair of DDS, but the probe team failed to produce any suspect, witness or piece of evidence to pin Duterte. The last attempt was to abduct and intimidate a murder suspect detained in nearby Panabo City jail which the team tried to “persuade” as among the DDS triggermen and to point at a graveyard of EJK victims. The inmate was clueless. In time, the probers were able to exhume bits of skeletal remains alright, but the bones were so badly deteriorated these crumbled to pieces. What was strange was that they also unearthed three pairs of license plates in the same grave which have not even rusted.
Integrated National Police Gen. Dionisio Tan-Gatue, now in retirement, relates in detail the horrible events in Davao Region at the height of communist insurgency. He says the Davao Death Squads are nothing but ghost soldiers.
Desperate for any piece of viable evidence, De Lima and her team brought their find to Manila and presented the same to the court. They also asked the court to summon Laud, the owner of the quarry. This did not, however, prosper because the RTC judge assigned to the case ruled that the pieces of evidence presented by De Lima were inadmissible. The corroborating lawyer on record for Laud is the current Secretary of Justice Vitaliano Aguirre, I was told.
It must be pointed out at this point that at the height of the investigation, even the United Nations Commission on Human Rights surreptitiously sent a special rapporteur, Philip Alston, to conduct a parallel investigation. But he left as quickly as he came. He did interview parents of suspected victims of drug campaign who were brought to him by members of local human rights foundation in the lobby of Marco Polo Hotel.
At the height of investigation, the HRW-New York also published a book entitled “You can die anytime...” There were attributions written about UNCHR purported affirmation of some data in the book. The UNCHR, moreover, issued a statement later that the Commission has nothing to do with the HRW publication.
Figment of imagination
CHR Chair De Lima, who eventually became Justice Secretary, was replaced by Etta Rosales. It must be on account of sheer frustration of not being able to indict Mayor Duterte that she and her successor continued to pick (and still do) Duterte as their prime exhibit when the subject of EJK surfaces.
De Lima went on to become a Senator. By this time, her favorite pet peeve was elected overwhelmingly on a platform of eradication of drug syndicates and stamping out corruption in the government bureaucracy. She must have thought that the Duterte Presidency is an affront to her decency and advocacy for human rights. As Chair of the Committee of Justice in the Senate, she lost no time and again opened a probe on EJK and DDS in yet another desperate attempt to incriminate Duterte.
By this time too, Rappler, riding on Facebook for its social media platform, had joined the fray. The irrepressible Rodrigo Duterte is proving to be a pain in the neck of the western leaders, he has to be tamed or done away with the way they uprooted the President of Ukraine whose political inclination was veering towards Russia. Senators De Lima and Antonio Trillanes called in two witnesses -- Matobato and Lascanas -- who confessed to being members of DDS. They claimed to have executed more than 1,200 EJK victims which they buried in Laud’s abandoned quary land.
Rappler had them covered with unusual space and frequency. It was like Omidyar funded Rappler to focus on DDS, EJK and Duterte alone. They raised death statistics which Time Magazine also adopted as if they were picking it from the air!
De Lima is now behind bars for her alleged involvement in drugs. No she was never accused of adultery by the wife of her driver with whom she had fell for because of her frailty as a woman. Other high profile inmates have their steamy stories too. In the meantime, Etta Rosales had been replaced by Chito Gascon. They had been joined in by the Catholic Bishop of the Philippines, the dying political opposition among them the “out-of-sync” Sen. Trillanes as BBC described him, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, Edcel Lagman and other leftist party list politicians in the Lower House, professional rallyists and student activists, in accusing Duterte of human rights violations and of the brutalities of his DDS.
But after all the noise and the accusations, I find it incomprehensible that if they were so sure of the 1,200 EJK victims buried in a small area of quarry land which is just about 10-minute drive from the City Hall of Davao, why cannot they find their quarry? The answer is simple: DDS is a phantom force and the dead they buried in the abandoned quarry are nothing but figment of their fertile imagination. (PNA)
Postscripts:
Jun Pala, was killed in September 2003, in an ambush while on his way home from a mahjong game in a remote subdivision where he stayed. That was the second attempt on his life. It was no secret to not a few of his friends in and out of the media circle, that his life has always been in constant danger. He was the prime suspect in the murder of a talent promoter whom he owed a huge sum of money. He was acquitted in that case. He ran into trouble with businessmen whom he shamed publicly. At one time, armed with an Uzi, he threatened a group of broadcast journalists in a downtown hotel. The incident led to the suspension of his program anew on orders of Col. Honesto Isleta who was then chairman of KBP. Pala thought that he remained to be in the hit list of the NPAs. He was also very scared of the consequence of his illicit affairs with married women but he did not elucidate who and why. His funeral march, however, was participated in by thousands of adoring fans. The confession of Matobato that then Mayor Duterte ordered Pala killed is a lot of hogwash. The identity of the triggerman is buried with the bones of the controversial anchorman. Pala knew who was to be his assassin for confided to me three days before he was gunned down that it is definitely not Digong.
Gen. Dionisio Tan-Gatue Jr. is still in his elements despite his delicate health. As we reminisce the past, he smiled in amusement to see some men now working in the Duterte government which he encountered during his tour of duty as Regional Commander of the Integrated National Police. Foremost among them are: Cabinet Sec. Jun Evasco and Atty. Antonio Arellano, member of Philippine Panel negotiating peace with CPP/NPA/NDF, who he said he “hosted” during his term, Labor Sec. Silvestre “Bebot” Bello III who was lawyering for detained NPA suspects was also among his “guests” and OPPAP Sec. Jesus Dureza who constantly visits him to intercede for their release. (As an aside, Dureza who as lawyer continued to write for the Manila Bulletin and editor of the Mindanao Times had a secretary named Rene’ Rentillo. She was the first media person in Davao who was brutally murdered by the NPAs for failing to pay revolutionary tax on her sari-sari store.) Then there is Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena who was a junior officer assigned in the Metropolitan District Command of Davao City.
