As well as police operations, many have been the victims of extra-judicial killings from unknown assailants.
Advertisement
Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre also echoed him, calling the allegations “lies and fabrications”.
Saying he was shocked by the extent of the drug problem, President Duterte yesterday asked for six more months to put an end to the drug menace and criminality, setting aside a promise that helped him achieve an overwhelming victory in the 2016 polls.
He said their targets were not only criminals but opponents of both Mr Duterte and one of his sons, Paolo Duterte, who is now the vice-mayor of Davao. “We’re the ninth safest city”.
Duterte has frequently denied involvement in any vigilantism as both mayor and president.
Duterte himself has previously conceded as much.
He told how Duterte had once rushed to the scene when the mayor’s men encountered a government agent.
As with many of President Duterte’s remarks, this one has been subjected to all sorts of interpretations.
“If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful”, TIME quoted him as saying to another crowd that day.
The killings he said he has knowledge of happened starting in 1988, when Duterte first became mayor, to 2013, when he expressed his desire to leave the death squad, prompting his colleagues to implicate him criminally in one killing.
“The rest were likely killed by vigilantes who may have been inspired by Duterte’s words―deaths the authorities say they are investigating”. By 2013, Matobato said he had grown exhausted of killing. “Our job was to kill criminals, drug pushers, petty robbers and rapists”, he said.
Victims would be shot or strangled, he said, with some disembowelled and dumped into the sea so fish could eat them, or in one case fed to a crocodile.
Matobato also claimed to have overheard Duterte order the bombing of mosques in Davao as retaliation for an attack on a cathedral.
“The Commission on Human Rights already conducted an investigation years ago, when the president was still a mayor, and charges were not filed, they did not see any direct evidence”, Duterte’s spokesman Martin Andanar said Thursday.
“Even if I wanted to, I can not kill them all because the last report would be this thick”, Duterte said, laughing. “My security detail are soldiers and are still alive”, he said.
Senators Panfilo Lacson, Aquilino Pimentel and Alan Peter Cayetano were among numerous lawmakers who said the witness could not be taken seriously.
Matobato’s testimony places that comment under scrutiny.
Duterte said policemen are no longer allowed to serve as bodyguards of barangay captains to “defang” village officials who are into illegal drugs.
The presidential palace has denied the latest accusations against Duterte.
US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch urged Manila to let United Nations investigators probe the hitman’s claims. The carnage is exactly what Duterte promised [during the election campaign].
“He emphasized his message in his final campaign speech”.
In June, after winning the presidency he effectively sanctioned the public killing of drug suspects, telling a rally “if you destroy my country, I will kill you”.
“I will not dignify with an answer the accusations of a madman”, he added.
Since he took office in July, some 3,000 people have been murdered.
Featured in the first New York Times story was photo of a woman cradling the body of her partner Michael Siaron, a 29-year-old pedicab driver whose death at the hands of unidentified gunmen gained wide attention.
Advertisement
Duterte, seemingly, is becoming increasingly risky. Some dealers have already given themselves up, apparently because they fear they will be killed. While 1,067 people who were killed are under investigation. He said he had no idea of the extent of the drug problem until he became Chief Executive.
