PRESIDENTIAL Spokesman Harry Roque on Monday chided Senator Leila De Lima and Commission on Human Rights chairman Jose Luis Martin “Gascon, calling them “hypocrites” for insisting there were extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration when they had supported a definition of the term that excluded the summary killings of drug suspects.
Roque said Administrative Order 35, which was signed during the Aquino administration, defined extra-legal killing or extrajudicial killing as a killing in which the victim was a member of or affiliated with an organization to include political, environmental, agrarian, labor or similar causes, or an advocate of these causes, or a media practitioner, or person(s) apparently mistaken or identified to be so.
“How is it now that when drug pushers or users die, Senator De Lima and Chairman Gascon insist that these are EJKs?” Roque said in a statement.
“Their sudden about-face is baffling given that these drug pushers and users are not members or affiliated with any political, environmental, agrarian or labor organization. These drug pushers or users are likewise not journalists.”
De Lima, as justice secretary under the Aquino administration, had signed the operational guidelines for the AO, which gave a definition of extra-judicial killings that excluded the killing of drug personalities.
Gascon was undersecretary for political affairs of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs.
The CHR, however, sticks to the definition provided by former United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston-sthat the term extra-judicial killing refers to “any killing by government forces as well as killings by any other groups or individuals which the government fails to investigate, prosecute and punish when it is in a position to do so.”
Roque accused the two of politicizing the deaths under Duterte’s drug war.
“If the two believed then that the AO they adopted was correct and in accordance with the law, they should be the first to defend the Duterte administration’s campaign against illegal drugs because the AO No. 35 signed by former President Benigno Aquino III is correct,” Roque said.
“It is high time that the hypocrisies of Senator De Lima and Chairman Gascon are exposed in favor of the truth. The Filipino people deserve no less.”