The Philippine government should invite an independent investigation involving the United Nations into allegations of direct involvement by President Rodrigo Duterte in extrajudicial killings, Human Rights Watch said today.
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He said that he was involved in the killings of petty criminals and suspected drug personalities in the city and that the killings were ordered by former mayor and now President Rodrigo Duterte.
“Our job was to kill criminals, rapists, [drug] pushers and snatchers”, Matobato testified. Matobato, a former Filipino militiaman, revealed that Duterte ordered militiamen to kill 1,000 people during his time as city mayor.
Since he took office in June, about 2,500 people have been killed in his “war on drugs”. More than 3,500 suspected drug users and dealers have been killed on the streets in the Philippines since Duterte took office – some shot by police, others killed under unclear circumstances, possibly by vigilantes.
Many of them were garroted, burned, quartered and then buried at a quarry owned by a police officer who was a member of the death squad.
While he was being questioned, Matobato held up a roll of tape which he said that the used to kill his victims. The death squad regularly dumped bodies into the sea with their stomachs eviscerated so they would sink, he said.
Senate President Koko Pimentel announced on his verified Facebook page that Edgar Matobato won’t be put in protective custody because his life has not been threatened.
Duterte aides said the government’s Commission on Human Rights had already investigated the allegations but did not file charges while his son, Paolo Duterte, called the testimony “mere hearsay” of “a madman”.
His testimony pictured out in awful detail that Mr Duterte was behind a death squad that killed more than a thousand people in Davao while he was the mayor for the past two decades.
“Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off”, he said.
Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre also echoed him, calling the allegations “lies and fabrications”.
“You can not wage a war without killing”, Duterte said, adding that many drug users were beyond rehabilitation”.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez proudly declares membership in the “DDS” – not the Davao death squads, which he claims do not exist, but Diehard Duterte Supporters. But he said their targets were not only criminals but also opponents of Duterte and one of his sons, Paolo Duterte, who is now the vice mayor of Davao.
Asked why he left the death squad, he answered, “I am bothered by my conscience”.
He said he believes the hearing is “a desperate measure to mask the effect of the forthcoming House of Representatives Committee on Justice hearing on the proliferation of drugs at the Bilibid prison” where Senator De Lima is allegedly linked.
Matubato said he was recruited to a death squad with five others in 1988, when Duterte first served as mayor.
De Lima had repeatedly said she was in communication with sources who could directly link the president to extrajudicial killings and the DDS, but only now has a witness come forward to deliver testimony.
The heat during Thursday’s Senate hearing was so intense it led Duterte ally and vice presidential running mate Senator Alan Peter Cayetano to accuse the Liberal Party of orchestrating the whole Senate drama to oust the President.
Duterte’s office denied the claims made by Matobato on Thursday, and said the President was “unfazed” by the Senate investigation.
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During a following visit to Washington, however, Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. underlined Thursday that the USA should not lecture the Philippines on human rights.
