Not Sorry

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he kept a “death squad” of convicts instructed to kill other “criminals” as part of his “war on drugs” in his testimony this week to a Senate hearing into the killings, the Guardian reported. Duterte, 79, appeared before lawmakers as part of an official investigation into his involvement in the war on drugs in his first public appearance since his presidential term ended in 2022.

Duterte served as mayor of Davao City where he began implementing his war on drugs before winning the presidency in 2016 by a landslide on a pledge to replicate his anti-crime strategy nationally, reported BBC News.

It’s estimated that as many as 30,000 people were killed between July 2016 and March 2019 in the nationwide drug war. Most of the victims were young men from poor, urban areas who were shot dead by police in the streets or in their homes.

In his opening statement, Duterte told lawmakers: “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.”

Duterte denied authorizing police to kill suspects, maintaining that he never ordered national police chiefs to carry out extrajudicial killings. But he added that he ordered officers to encourage criminals to fight back and resist arrest, so that police could then justify killing them, reported Rappler, an independent news outlet in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, he said he created a “death squad” while serving as mayor of Davao City.

“I had a death squad of seven, but they were not policemen, they were also gangsters,” he said. “I’ll ask a gangster to kill somebody. If you will not kill, I will kill you now.”

Earlier this month, a separate parliamentary inquiry heard evidence from a former police colonel who said officers could earn as much as 1 million pesos ($17,000) per killing during the drug war.

Duterte denied those accusations.

Carlos H Conde of Human Rights Watch expressed doubt that the inquiry, which was initiated by Duterte’s Senate allies who are themselves implicated in his policies, would lead to accountability.

Duterte is also facing an investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity over the killings that occurred in Davao while he was mayor and also during his presidency.