THE Philippines said Wednesday that President Rodrigo Duterte’s killing of three people in the 1980s was part of a police operation, after the United Nations human rights chief urged Manila to investigate him for murder.
In several speeches last week, Duterte recounted how in 1988, early in the first of his several terms as mayor of Davao City, he and local police ambushed and killed three suspected kidnappers.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement Tuesday that Duterte’s killings, by his own admission, “clearly constitute murder” and Philippine judicial authorities must launch a murder investigation.
Duterte spokesman Ernesto Abella said Wednesday Zeid’s comments were nothing more than “his opinion.”
“Again, let me just remind one and all, that the incident referred to by the President was actually covered by media and it was (a) legitimate police action,” Abella added.
“It’s already been under scrutiny in the past, but it has already been addressed as far as we know,” he added.
He did not address Duterte’s possession and discharge of a firearm while he was not a policeman.
Duterte has said he routinely carried a gun during his early years as mayor of Davao to protect himself in a high-crime environment. He has not said if the weapon used in the ambush was licensed.
He won the presidential election by a landslide in May largely on a vow to kill 100,000 criminals to stop the country’s slide into a “narco-state.”
According to the UN, nearly 6,100 people have been killed since Duterte took office in late June.
Police put the figure at about 5,300 violent deaths, with Duterte consistently rejecting allegations that his incendiary comments could be encouraging police to commit murder.
While mayor of Davao, Duterte was investigated by the independent Commission on Human Rights over allegations he ran death squads that killed more than a thousand petty criminals in the city.
Duterte has variously denied or confirmed the allegations. The commission did not file any criminal charges after completing its inquiry.
Zeid called for “credible and independent investigations” to be immediately reopened into the Davao killings.
And he demanded similar probes into the “shocking number of killings that have occurred across the country since Mr. Duterte became president”.
“The perpetrators must be brought to justice, sending a strong message that violence, killings and human rights violations will not be tolerated by the State and that no one is above the law,” Zeid said.
During a Palace briefing, Abella said the Palace remained bullish that UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial and summary killings, Agnes Callamard, would accept President Duterte’s conditions for her coming to the Philippines.
“First and foremost, the President did open up with conditions. Right? So it’s now the UN rapporteur’s call,” he said.
The government accused Callamard of breaking protocol when she allegedly jumped to conclusions based on unverified media reports that Duterte was promoting extrajudicial killings.
But Zeid ahd expressed his full support for Callamard, calling on the Philippines to lift its series of conditions imposed on her visit.
Also on Wednesday, the Commission on Human Rights said it will look again into the involvement of Duterte in the killings of criminals when he was Davao mayor.
CHR Chairman Chito Gascon said the commission will build up another investigation of Duterte’s statement that he personally killed criminal suspects.
“CHR has reconstituted a team to further investigate [and] look into the new revelations and public admissions that may shed light on our previous findings,” he told an online news service.
Gascon was referring to the President’s admission before business leaders on Dec. 14 that when he was mayor of Davao, he used to kill criminals to show police that they, too, could do it.
“And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill,” he said.
Senator Leila de Lima as then CHR chairperson investigated Duterte for his alleged involvement with the Davao Death Squad in the summary killings of at least 1,000 criminal suspects. No case was ever filed, however.