Arroyo orders probe of Davao death squads

MANILA, Philippines – President Arroyo has ordered the investigation of reported death squads in Davao City.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the allegations of Davao death squads has nurtured the false belief that the State sanctions assassinations to fight criminality.

“It is in this regard that President Arroyo has directed the Department of Interior and Local Government and the Philippine National Police to undertake all measures to get to the bottom of this issue by determining, first and foremost, the actual existence of such death squads, and by bringing perpetrators to account for their actions before the law,” he said.

Ermita said the government will never tolerate much less sponsor criminal actions for any reason or at any time.

“Criminality is a social malaise that can never be remedied by such executions, which are illegal as they are immoral,” he said.

Ermita said Mrs. Arroyo has called on individuals who may know of the existence of death squads to come forward and testify.

Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez was instructed to strengthen the Witness Protection Program to give refuge to people “who will respond to the President’s call,” he added.

Complaint vs Alston

Governors and mayors have complained that United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston has downgraded government efforts to stop extrajudicial killings.

Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone, League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP) secretary-general, said Alston’s latest conjecture that government efforts to end the killings have largely been “symbolic” does not make sense as he had acknowledged the administration’s initiatives have led to a decline in the killings over the past two years.

Evardone was reacting to the 16-page follow-up report that Alston had submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in the Philippines.

“If anything, the shrinking death toll, which Alston himself had recognized in his report, is the best proof that the Arroyo government’s initiatives have not merely been symbolic in nature, and that there has actually been significant progress in its efforts to put an end to what the special rapporteur calls the ‘culture of impunity’ prevailing in our country,” he said.

Evardone said Alston should have been the first to know it was virtually impossible to compare the progress in the resolution of political killings with those of media-related murders.

In his report, Alston reportedly questioned the government’s position that the long judicial process prevented it from prosecuting suspects in the political killings when this did not appear to be a problem in the media-related cases.

Kelly Delgado, Karapatan secretary-general in southern Mindanao, refuted Alston’s claim, saying there has been a rise in the number of killings, from an average of 11 to 16 a year, in a comparative study over the last eight-year period in the region.

“It is not true that the activist killings are on the decline compared to two years ago, if statistics obtaining in the region are to be scrutinized,” he said.

Chief Superintendent Nicanor Bartolome, Philippine National Police spokesman, said some of Alston’s general observations on the investigation of Task Force USIG on unexplained killings could be a premature assessment of the actions police. –-Paolo Romero with Cecille Suerte Felipe, Edith Regalado, Philippine Star