‘KILL KILL KILL’ (7)

BAHAGI ang sumusunod ng unang tsapter ng aking aklat “KILL KILL KILL Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines; Crimes Against Humanity vs. Rodrigo Duterte Et. Al.” Ipinaliwanag ko na mahirap lusutan ni Bato dela Rosa na managot sa malawakang patayan sa administrasyon ni Gongdi dahil nilagdaan niya ang Command Memorandum Circular 1 na nagtakda sa PNP bilang pangunahing ahensya na nagpatupad ng giyera kontra droga. Si bato ang hepe ng PNP noong panahon na iyon. Kabadong-kabado si Bato. Hindi kami magtaka kung maihi siya sa pantalon sa sobrang kaba.

‘INTERNAL CLEANSING’
EVEN before Duterte took his oath, mass violence started. When it was clear that Duterte was the 2016 presidential elections winner, his camp immediately intimated to the PNP corps of officers that Duterte was inclined to wage a bloody war against illegal drugs. No quarters were to be given to drug users, runners, pushers, and bigtime, or smalltime, importers and retailers. “That was an order” – this was how informants put it. By end-May, 2016, or in the waning days of the Benigno Aquino III administration, an upsurge in the number of summary executions was perceptible, as traditional media reported them. The number of the victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) went up when Duterte took his oath by June 30. It could be seen that certain PNP top officials jumped off the gun. They were competing to get noticed by Duterte. “May mga nagpasikat (Some people were showing off),” a barangay captain said

‘WHITE PAPER.’ An apocryphal January 31, 2017 “white paper” quoting unidentified active and retired police officers said Duterte’s drug war contained the following characteristics: first, it has the PNP as its main vehicle and it follows the “chain of command” system; second, it is essentially “state-sponsored” no matter how Duterte and his cohorts have denied it; third, it has employed unnamed vigilante groups to augment the groups of police officers officially assigned to do the job; and fourth, it is a program engaged in “social cleansing,” which was to get rid of the country of the unemployed and dregs of society, or what is called “lumpenproletariat.” Duterte’s war on drugs is the pursuit of extrajudicial killings (EJKs), according to the white paper entitled “Special Report: The State-Sponsored Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines.” Moreover, the anti-drug war is unique in the sense it erases the distinction between drug users, pushers (retailers), and drug lords (producers and wholesalers). They are one and the same under him, although Duterte did not fully explain the loss of distinction.

The first six months of the Duterte government saw the immediate creation of a system for the war on drugs. The white paper mentioned the augmentation of the police anti-illegal drug force by elements from Mindanao to form an almost company-sized police force, whose job is to engage in liquidation missions of suspects in the drug trade. The white paper discussed the creation of a mechanism of the “reward system” for law enforcers and vigilante groups engaged in EJKs. It could be surmised that the PNP has become the virtual “death squad” of Duterte, although certain police officers argued that the PNP was just implementing the presidential mandate. It could be surmised too that certain police officers were not comfortable to become part of Duterte’s death squad. They do not like to be known as butchers of the people they have sworn to serve. Whether or not they are in the minority is not known because they did not openly raise howls, as the war on drugs progressed. Some police officials were said to have applied and went into schooling to avoid involvement in the war against drugs.

At that time, thousands of suspected drug users, runners, pushers, and traders were summarily killed nationwide. Two months after Rodrigo Duterte swore in as president on noon of June 30, 2016, it was clear the war on drugs would continue as planned. Like attack dogs unleashed by their masters from their chains, police officers, in groups, or in combination with vigilante groups, aggressively went into killing sprees in the depressed communities of Metro Manila and other provinces. In many instances, police officers barged into the victims’ homes even in the wee hours of the morning, ordering household members to get out of the house and killing outright suspects right in their homes. In other instances, they took – or kidnapped – the persons of interest out of their homes, tortured, and shot them with their handguns or assault weapons elsewhere. They hardly had arrest or search warrants. In their reports, police officers offered the narrative that the victims fought back, or in the vernacular, “nanlaban,” endangering or harming the arresting police officers. Their alibis could not be proven though except those antiquated, worn out .38 handguns, which were presumably thrown by police officers into their bodies ostensibly to prove their alibis.

Quoting official records culled from a “source” at the PNP Directorate for Operations, the white paper, entitled “Special Report: The State Sponsored Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines,” said the death toll reached 6,273 persons, of whom 2.224 persons were “suspected drug personalities killed in police operations,” while 4,049 were victims of vigilante killings, or “death under investigation.“ Why the number of vigilante killings was far larger than legitimate police operations was not explained, although it could be surmised that a number of EJKs was not reported officially. It said:

“For the first seven months of the ‘war on drugs,’ the monthly death toll averaged 896, while the daily average of death tally was around 30. The average death toll in police operations for 210 days (7 x 30 days) is 11 persons. In effect, the PNP is claiming that the deadly armed encounters for 210 days (7 months) registered a daily death toll of 10 killed drug suspects.

“As to the alleged [vigilante killings/deaths under investigation], there is a death daily toll average of 19 persons. The total daily death total for [local police operations] and [vigilante killings/deaths under investigation] is (19+11) = 30 persons killed in a span in less than 7 months.”

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HOW THEY DID IT
THE white paper could be regarded as “very revealing” for its audacity and profundity because it narrated how police officers did the war on drugs, specifically the summary executions or what we call from the human rights parlance, extrajudicial killings (EJKs). As part of the war on drug infrastructure, the PNP had come out with its own standard operating procedure on its summary executions of its targets. The following unedited text has to be drawn out of the white paper for accuracy:

The standard and typical carrying out of An EJK Operation by a Police Station/Community Precinct of the five (5) Police Districts of National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) is a cycle replicated nationwide in all Police Regional Offices (PRO)/Provincial Police Offices (PPO) and City/Municipality Police Offices, down to Police Community Precincts (PCP). This cycle is outlined below:

The Station Commander, in his capacity as head of the Station Anti-Illegal Drug Task Group (SAIDTG) will preside at a tactical briefing by his PCP Commanders. This is a weekly assessment on the progress of the war on drugs through EJK. (Itutuloy)