HOUSE QUAD committee hearings should also include in its investigation ex-President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s counter-insurgency campaign, a human rights group said on Thursday, citing gross violations against political activists.
“It is high time that the quad committee takes a serious look at Duterte’s accountability for other state-sponsored killings that were very likely perpetrated by the same death squads funded by government monies,” Karapatan Secretary-General Cristina E. Palabay said in a statement, referring to a House committee investigating alleged extra-judicial killings under Mr. Duterte’s administration.
The Philippine government estimates that more than 6,000 died under the campaign, according to a Facebook infographics published in June 2022 by RealNumbersPH, which is operated by the inter-agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs. Human rights groups say the death toll could be as high as 30,000.
Hundreds of activists were slain during Mr. Duterte’s administration, said Ms. Palabay, highlighting the need to investigate human rights violations against them.
“Revelations at the quad comm hearings already point to the involvement of some of Duterte’s anti-drug henchmen in perpetrating human rights violations against activists and other human rights defenders,” she said.
She cited Oplan Sauron, an internal security program meant to address “lawless violence” in Negros and Samar islands and the Bicol Region under a 2018 memorandum.
“Oplan Sauron, a bloody counter-insurgency operation jointly conducted by the military and police that was centered on Negros Island was actually framed as a plan not just against rebel groups, but criminals and individuals involved in the illegal drug trade,” she said.
Ms. Palabay said that Oplan Sauron was a “coordinate military and police operation” that “brutalized” activists, with them being tagged as members of the armed communist movement to justify their killings. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio