TWO family members of slain suspected drug pushers told a Senate hearing Monday that police shook down then killed their kin despite their intention to surrender.
Harra Kazuo, 32, of Pasay City and Mary Rose Aquino, 23, both hooded and wearing huge dark sunglasses, told the Senate justice and human rights committee chaired by Senator Leila de Lima that police had executed their loved ones.
Kazuo and Aquino were among the 12 witnesses to be presented by De Lima in the Senate hearings on extrajudicial killings.
The two women insisted their slain loved ones were planning to surrender to the authorities out of fear but were shot dead by the police.
Kazuo said her live-in partner JP Bertes and the latter’s father Renato Bertes were executed by Pasay policemen inside the Pasay PNP Station 4 on Libertad Street on the evening of July 6.
She said JP was a drug pusher and a drug user who got his drugs from another drug pusher in Pasay City. She was not aware if the illegal drugs came from policemen.
Aquino also admitted her parents, Rodelio and Rosalie Campos, repacked and peddled drugs supplied to them by Antipolo policemen. He also said these policemen and her parents held pot sessions in their house, also in Antipolo.
Between sobs, she recalled seeing her parents in a morgue on June 22 or two days after she last saw them. She said police investigators told them they saw the body of her parents in separate places in Antipolo.
Kazuo cried when she remembered how policemen who barged into their house removed the panties of their two-year-old daughter, hoping to find shabu inserted in her anus.
She said her daughter as well as her mother-in-law were present when the police were rummaging through their house. She said one of the policemen threatened to kill her live-in partner, but she said Bertes begged him not to do it in front of his family.
Kazuo said her father-in-law later arrived at their house while the police were searching for drugs. The police, she said, did not find any illegal drugs in their house.
She said her partner and father-in-law were brought to the Pasay police station where they were later killed while allegedly trying to grab the gun of a policeman.
PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa ordered the relief of all policemen involved in the death of the Campos couple.
In his opening statement, Dela Rosa said the police did not condone extrajudicial killings and blamed crime syndicates for the rising number of summary executions in the country.
“The PNP’s stand against extrajudicial killings is uncompromising. If any cop is found violating the law on self-defense he will be investigated, prosecuted and accordingly punished,” Dela Rosa said.
He also said the PNP does not and will not ever condone vigilante killings.
“I have previously mentioned that these killings are perpetrated by various syndicate groups involved in illegal drugs,” he also said.
Therefore, Dela Rosa said the PNP would “extend the full force of the law against those responsible for these killings.”
The PNP chief assured lawmakers that the PNP was “more than willing to adopt the lessons that will come out of this hearing.”
On questioning from Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon, Dela Rosa said that from July 1 to Aug. 22, 712 people were killed in police operations while 1,067 were killed by vigilantes or other groups. He said their deaths remain under investigation.
Dela Rosa also said more than 600,000 drug users and pushers surrendered to the police.
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV told Dela Rosa they were not trained by the Philippine Military Academy to do what’s wrong and illegal.
“Let’s just do the right thing. We know what is right. We weren’t trained in the academy to do what’s [wrong and illegal],” Trillanes told Dela Rosa.
The senator also warned the police that Duterte will not always be there to protect them as his term would only last for six years.
“General, the world is always turning. Now, Duterte is in the position; who knows if priority of the next in line is human rights and will conduct an investigation, by then you’d be retired and the police would be bare and exposed,” he said.
Lacson, meanwhile, asked the Commission on Human Rights to change the name of its “Team Rub-out,” saying it has a prejudgment against the police.
CHR National Capital Region Director Gilbert Boiser said they will consider changing the name. The CHR investigating team looks into incidents involving deaths in police operations where human rights violations might have been committed.
In conducting the probe, De Lima said her concern was not about the growing tally of killings reported by the PNP. “What is particularly worrisome is that the campaign against drugs seems to be an excuse for some law enforcers and other elements like vigilantes to commit murder with impunity,” she said.
Also on Monday, militant groups slammed the Liberal Party for allegedly spreading rumors that leftist members of the Duterte Cabinet—Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano, Social Welfare and Development Secretary Judy Taguiwalo, National Anti-Poverty Commission convener Liza Maza and Labor Undersecretary Joel Maglungsod—would resign to protest extrajudicial killings and the burial of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos.
The rumors were spread by a text blast from an anonymous number.
Bayan Secretary-General Renato Reyes said that reports of their resignation were just intrigues and without basis.
“No one will resign. It’s just intrigues to undermine the peace talks. Our secretaries are continuing their work in the Cabinet,” Reyes said.
He said the bogus text advisory was circulated among reporters who covered the LP during the elections. With John Paolo Bencito