MANILA, Philippines — The thousands of lives lost in the government’s war on drugs and President Rodigo Duterte’s repeated vows to shield police from accountability justify the doubts about the Sunday raids that left Ozamiz Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and 15 others dead, a human rights watchdog said.
Parojinog, whose wife and two siblings also died, and his daughter and vice mayor Nova, who was arrested, were among local government executives publicly accused by Duterte of involvement in the drug trade.
Police claimed the fatalities shot it out with personnel serving search warrants early Sunday morning. They also said drugs and weapons were recovered during the raids.
“But there are already questions about the reliability of the police account of the incident,” Human Rights Watch noted Tuesday, adding that “skepticism of the accounts by Philippine National Police of anti-drug operations is fully-justified.”
The deputy director of HRW’s Asia division, Phelim Kine, noted that the organization itself “has debunked government claims of the lawful nature of the deaths of more than 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers killed since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016.”
“Interviews with witnesses and victims’ relatives, and analysis of police records, show a pattern of unlawful police conduct designed to paint a veneer of legality over extrajudicial executions,” he said.
Various counts place the total thus far at more than 12,000 and rising.
Kine also noted questions raised about the Ozamiz raids, including that of Senator Francis Pangilinan aout “why the raid occurred at 2:30 a.m. and why police ‘paralyzed’ close circuit television cameras in and around Parojinog’s home, which could have provided evidence of how the operation unfolded.”
The HRW officer said while the majority of those killed in the war on drugs come from the urban poor, the death of Parojinog “have also raised questions about police methods and accountability” as the earlier killing of Mayor Samsudin Dimaukom of Datu Saudi Ampatuan town, Maguindanao last October and, in early November, Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. of Albuera, Leyte who was shot dead in his cell at the Baybay City sub-provincial jail.
In the case of Espinosa, who surrendered after being named by Duterte in public, “both the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine Senate concluded the police officers had committed ‘premeditated murder.’ Despite that ruling, earlier this month, the 18 officers implicated in Espinosa’s death returned to work,” Kine said.
Pointing to Duterte’s repeated assurances to “police officers engaged in his ‘drug war’ that they will not face accountability for their actions” and “to pardon them if they face prosecution for killing people,” Kine said, “that means police will continue to kill with impunity for the foreseeable future.”
