Oct. 29 (UPI) — Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte testified before a Philippine Senate investigation into his so-called “war on drugs” that he operated a death squad while he was mayor of the southern city of Davao made up of “gangsters” and wealthy people who enjoyed killing.
He told the subcommittee’s opening hearing Monday that he had bypassed the police and said he took “full, moral and legal responsibility” for the crackdown in Mindanao and later nationally after scaling up the scheme during his 2016-2022 presidency.
“Thousands were killed when I was mayor, but they were criminals. I can make a confession now, if you want. I had a death squad of seven. But they were not composed of police. They were gangsters,” the 79-year-old Duterte told senators.
He opted not to use the city’s police officers because if they had done the killing they would be subject to investigation which could lead to them facing disciplinary action and possible suspension.
Saying he exercised absolute power in its operation, Duterte said he would order squad members to “kill this person, because if you do not, I will kill you now.”
Duterte, who took turns as Davao’s mayor and vice mayor with daughter Sara Duterte — more or less continuously over almost three decades — was chairman of the local branch of the Liberal Party during the height of his brutal crackdown in the country’s second-largest city.
In a show of defiance, he defended the extrajudicial killings as a necessary evil during a period when the country was being ravaged by drugs and drug-related crime and social issues.
“Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it… I did it for my country,” said Duterte in his opening statement.
“I hate drugs, make no mistake about it.
“For all its successes and shortcomings, the drug war was not a perfect one. I want to leave this behind to the Filipino people because I would never have another chance in the future. I — and I alone — take full, legal and moral responsibility,” Duterte added.
However, he said that if he did get that second opportunity, he would do it all again, insisting that many offenders had resumed their criminal activities after he left office after completing his six-year term as president.
“If given another chance, I’ll wipe all of you,” he said.
Duterte won a landslide victory in the 2016 presidential on a campaign pledge to rid the Philippines of the scourge of drugs — mostly crystal methamphetamine — by rolling out the brutal tactics he employed in Davao to the rest of the country.
The war on drugs he led saw 6,252 people killed by unknown gunmen and in questionable police operations with rights groups claiming the real figure was far higher — as many as 30,000, including many who were innocent of any crime — triggering an International Criminal Court probe that got underway in 2023.
Duterte also testified that he instructed police officers to “encourage” suspects to resist so they would have a self-defense justification for killing.
At Monday’s hearing, Duterte sat at the same table as former Sen. Leila de Lima who spent almost seven years in prison for three drug-related charges after outspoken criticism of Duterte’s law and order policies.
The former politician and human rights advocate who steadfastly denied wrongdoing and alleged her prosecution had been politically motivated had her third and final drug trafficking-related charge dismissed by a Philippine court in June more than seven years after she was arrested in February 2017.
A 2022 report by the United Nations’ human rights office found that the way Duterte framed the drug problem during his presidency could be seen as giving police a license to kill.
OHCHR urged the Philippine government to address the issue of accountability for abuses linked to the war on drugs, warning that despite some improvements “impunity for rights violations and police abuses persists.”
The office said it “continued to receive allegations of human rights violations by members of the Philippine National Police” with killings continuing to be reported in anti-illegal drug operations.
OHCHR previously put the numbers killed at more than 8,600 saying the vast majority of these killings remain uninvestigated.
Police claimed many of the people who died were drug lords or dealers killed in “self-defense” during fire-fights.
That narrative is strongly rejected by the families of the victims who insist that their loved ones’ only transgression was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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