UN Officials Hit Davao Killings, Urge Authorities to Uphold the Law

At least 150 suspected drug users – many of them minors - out of a target of 500 have been summarily executed by alleged death squads in Davao City in southern Philippines. Except for a few NGOs and human rights lawyers, church and business groups have been curiously silent about the killings. But the reports have prompted a United Nations agency to urge Davao authorities to make sure that the legal system and not vigilante killings is upheld.

BY CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat.com

DAVAO CITY – Officials of a United Nations agency that deals with the global problem of drug abuse have urged authorities and the public to use the legal system in dealing with drug users and suspected criminals, as well as to implement intervention programs that address their needs, rather than murder them systematically.

“Society should use the legal system and not establish or support an unlawful mechanism” in dealing with drug abusers and suspected criminals, said Yngve Danling, senior law enforcement adviser of the Bangkok-based UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) Regional Center for East Asia and the Pacific.

Danling was reacting to news of the so-called vigilante killings in this city, as well as the “death list” of 500 alleged drug users and pushers that Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte released in mid-October. Many of those in the list later turned up dead or had already been killed – allegedly by the “Davao Death Squad” (DDS) -- by the time the list was released to the public.

In an email interview with this reporter, Danling said he is “certainly against” the publication of the names and any information about young suspected criminals which, “as it looks, is aimed to get the public to punish these youngsters and even kill them.”

“Vigilante” killings in this city have increased the past months, peaking in October with the deaths of 17 suspected criminals, many of them minors. This is also the same period that Duterte intensified his fight against drugs in the city, vowing to end it by this month.

More than 150 executed

More than 150 persons have been executed by the DDS since 1995. The killings were at times done with such brazenness that child-rights and human-rights advocates find unnerving, such as the shooting in broad daylight of two 17-year-olds in October just hours before a rally to condemn the killings was about to start.

Myra Macla of the nongovernment Kabiba Alliance for Children’s Concerns said the manner of the killing was meant to ridicule children’s rights advocates, “as if to tell us that the killing would continue despite the protests.”

A member of the DDS has owned responsibility for the killings but so far the police have not made any breakthrough in their investigations. The probe will also include the mayor’s alleged links with the DDS. Duterte has denied any hand in the murders, even saying that he condemns it, but based on his statement to the media, his position is quite apparent.

In a TV program aired last week, The Probe Team showed Duterte cursing those who have been killed. He also said in Tagalog: “(These criminals) would cut people up, shoot them and rape them, and you want the mayor of Davao City to just smile just because they are poor, just because they are minors? Shit!”

Duterte is enjoying support from the public, if the results of telephone surveys by radio stations and newspapers are any indication. The Catholic Church and the business sector, however, are curiously silent on the matter. But child-rights and human-rights groups have condemned the killings and are demanding due process in dealing with criminality.

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in this city has issued a statement on the killings: “Peace begins when human rights are fully respected but when they are violated or ignored, and when the pursuit of individual interest or groups (i.e. DDS) unjustly prevails over the common good as when the summary killing goes unabated, then the seed of instability and violence are inevitably sown and there will be a breakdown of the rule of law.”

Sign of intolerance

Councilor Angela Librado, who sponsored a City Council resolution urging an investigation into the murders, said at a dialogue last week with gang members that the murders are a sign of society’s “intolerance” to the poor sector of Davao society, to which most of the victims belong.

Danling, meanwhile, pointed out that the “vigilante” killings in Davao City could be unique. “In some countries especially in South America, certain groups have taken action to kill criminals in an organized form but I have not heard about young, petty criminals being systematically murdered,” he said.

Cathy Walker, the regional field coordinator in the Philippines for the UNDCP’s Project Global Initiative on Prevention of Substance Abuse, said measures to stop drug abuse by minors should be preventive, not punitive.

“If there is a drug problem in the community, the way to deal with it is to identify the youths’ problems, which are mostly related to their families, check their self-esteem, ask about their needs. The key is: Does it work if we ask these people?” says Walker, who was in Davao City this week to oversee the implementation of an UNDCP project targeting young drug abusers and involving various NGOs.

She says this approach of involving the victims of drug abuse in finding solutions to their problems and patterning any program on these “has proven by the UNDCP to be successful.” Bulatlat.com

We want to know what you think of this article.