HR group seeks probe on Mindanao death squad

MANILA, Philippines - Human rights advocates said that an alleged “death squad” is responsible for 298 killings in Tagum City in Mindanao.

The group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Philippine government should investigate this death squad that had been implicated in unexplained killings of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals and street children over the past decade.

Official police records obtained by Human Rights Watch showed the killings between January 2007 and March 2013 were attributed by provincial police to the Tagum death squad and nobody has been prosecuted.

HRW’s 71-page report, “One Shot to the Head: Death Squad Killings in Tagum City, Philippines” details the involvement of local government officials, including Tagum City’s former mayor Rey “Chiong” Uy and police officers in the killings.

The report draws heavily on interviews and affidavits from three self-proclaimed members of the death squad in Tagum City that allegedly took part in the killings.

It also examines the failure of the government to seriously investigate the death squad and bring those responsible to justice.

Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at HRW, said, “Tagum City’s former mayor helped organize and finance a death squad linked to the murder of hundreds of residents. He and other city officials and police officers underwrote targeted killings as a perverse form of crime control.”

Since 1998, when he was first elected Tagum City’s mayor, Uy, along with close aides and city police officers, hired, equipped and paid for an operation that at its height consisted of 14 hit men and accomplices.

Many were on the city government payroll with the Civil Security Unit, a City Hall bureau tasked with traffic management and providing security in markets and schools.

HRW interviewed more than three dozen people, including surviving victims and their families, witnesses to killings, police officers and former death squad members.

The former death squad members described how those who refused to carry out orders, sought to quit or otherwise fell into disfavor were themselves likely to become death squad victims.

“There is compelling evidence of the involvement of Tagum City police and former mayor Rey Uy in a death squad that operated during Uy’s 1998-2013 tenure as mayor. Tagum death squad’s activities imposed a fear-enforced silence in Tagum City that allowed the killers and their bosses to literally get away with murder,” Kine said.

The 12 killings that HRW documented typically occurred outdoors, on the streets and often in broad daylight. The hit men, wearing baseball caps and sunglasses and armed with .45 caliber handguns, would arrive and depart on government-issued motorcycles.

Former death squad members told HRW that they would routinely inform local police via text message of an impending targeted killing, so the police would not interfere.

After the killings, the police in turn would notify them if any witnesses identified them.

Those targeted were primarily people that Uy had declared to be the “weeds” of Tagum society, namely suspected petty criminals and drug dealers, as well as street children.

The death squad drew its targets from the “order of battle,” a list of names coming from various sources, including local community leaders, neighborhood watchmen and police intelligence officers.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of the Interior and Local Government provided the names of drug suspects.

The Tagum death squad also apparently carried out “gun-for-hire” operations that Uy was either unaware of or did not specifically commission, such as the killings of a journalist, a judge, at least two police officers and a tribal leader as well as local politicians and businessmen.

In several cases, the death squad’s handlers would fabricate drug allegations against the target of a contract killing to justify the murder.

Former Tagum death squad members told HRW that the unit was paid P5,000 for every kill, which the members would divide among themselves.

They said that on at least two occasions, Uy personally paid the death squad members for two killings.

A former hit man who was himself attacked by his former colleagues surrendered to the Davao del Norte provincial police and later agreed to testify in a case filed against Uy and others.

Targeted killings have continued but with less frequency since Uy stepped down as mayor in June 2013.

The Tagum death squad was initially a crime-fighting group patterned after the death squad in nearby Davao City, which propelled that city’s mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, to national fame.

In February 2011, Uy issued an explicit warning to criminal elements in the city advising them to “go somewhere else.”

A senior official of the governmental Commission on Human Rights described these murders as silent killings because they were hardly ever reported in the media.

HRW noted that local and national authorities have failed to seriously investigate the vast majority of Tagum City’s killings.

While police routinely cite the lack of witnesses to explain the absence of prosecutions, victims’ relatives and witnesses say they fear testifying, largely due to the perceived links of the death squad to local officials.

President Aquino has largely ignored killings by death squads in Tagum City and other urban areas, HRW said.

HRW called on the Aquino administration to direct the responsible government agencies to take measures to stop the killings in Tagum City and elsewhere, thoroughly investigate death squad killings and the death squads themselves, and bring justice to the victims’ families.