FORMER Commission on Human Rights chairwoman Loretta Ann Rosales on Wednesday again criticized Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for supporting the summary killing of lawless elements.
“He makes a mockery of the criminal justice system,” Rosales said in a television interview.
“It’s very cynical and I think he derives a lot of pressure from seeing all of us alarmed that a high government official like him, the highest in Davao City, can afford to talk this way and get away with murder. He is laughing at us.”
Duterte had no direct involvement in the Davao Death Squad believed to be responsible for the death of criminals in the late 1980s and 1990s, but Rosales said he must be held responsible for the killings because he was the mayor at the time.
“Mayor Duterte is the highest official in Davao City and he knows fully well that summary killings are ongoing,” Rosales said.
“Even the police know about the summary killings, and yet they did not do anything about it.”
Rosales said it was evident that Duterte and the police allowed the vigilantes to kill suspected criminals.
“That is a crime. That is a sin of omission because you have command responsibility,” she said.
Earlier, Duterte admitted his links to the Davao Death Squad that was responsible for the killing of more than 1,000 people who were mostly drug dealers.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the Aquino administration to investigate the Davao Death Squad and to sanction Duterte for supporting summary executions.
But Duterte on Wednesday said he had nothing to do with the summary killings in Davao and that he had never ordered the killing of suspected
criminals.
Rosales on Wednesday likened Duterte’s administration to that of the late President Ferdinand Marcos and speculated he would bring back the abuses of the martial law years once he was back in power.