Duterte should face charges, says lawyer
A blackened body lies unidentified on a slab in a Manila funeral home, one of thousands of suspected extra-judicial killings, or EJKs, as they have become known in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
The heavily tattooed man in his 20s was found on a Sunday with a bag over his head, hands tied by wire, shot seven times, stabbed 10 times - probably with an ice pick. His eyes gouged out.
As the death toll in the crackdown tops almost 8000, a Filipino lawyer has asked the International Criminal Court in The Hague to charge Duterte and 11 other Philippine officials with mass murder and crimes against humanity.
Lawyer Jude Josue Sabio, said in a 77-page complaint that Duterte was the ‘‘mastermind’’ of a campaign that has killed more than 8000 people, mostly poor young men, since 1988, when Duterte was first elected mayor of Davao City in the southern Philippines.
The complaint cites investigations by human rights groups and senior Philippine Catholic bishops denouncing the crackdown as a ‘‘reign of terror’’.
Every night for months photographers on Manila police’s graveyard shift have been documenting what has become the biggest slaughter of civilians in south-east Asia since the Khmer Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s.
The calamity is for all to see in urban slums, home to many of the country’s most impoverished and marginalised people.
Fairfax Media photographer Kate Geraghty documented the case of 26-year-old transgender Heart de Chavez, which has been sent to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, as a case study of alleged police complicity in EJK atrocities.
First there was an arrest and alleged police extortion. Then execution. ’’She was very kind, generous and a good,’’ said Heart’s sister Arriana.
At the age of 14, Heart grew her hair long, started taking hormone pills and found work washing towels at a beauty parlour.
When her father died when she was in her early 20s she was left to provide for her mother and two single sisters with four children.
Heart’s debts grew until she started dealing in drugs last year, earning 500 pesos (NZ$14) for each transaction.
Police arrested her in January and demanded money but she couldn’t pay, her family says.
At least seven masked men later burst into the plywood house in a slum where Heart and her family lived, stepping over children sleeping in a narrow hallway.
Amid the children’s screams one of men grabbed Heart by the hair and pounded her head on a table, family members say.
Heart’s 61-year-old mother Elena begged for the men not to hurt her as they dragged her out crying. ’’Ma, help me,’’ Heart screamed.
Minutes later four gunshots rang out across the neighbourhood. Heart was found inside an empty house with a bullet hole in her cheek, her legs curled under her body.
Witnesses saw the killers walk away laughing.
The report to the Human Rights Commission, citing witnesses, implicates police.
But not one suspect has been brought to justice for any EJKs which have been documented in investigations by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and media organisations, including Fairfax Media.
According to police statistics, more than 4000 people have been killed by police or supposed vigilantes in the crackdown since Duterte, known as the Punisher, took office on June 30 last year.
But there have been few police investigations into the police killings. Police claim every one of those killed by police were drugs suspects who supposedly ‘‘fought back’’.
The official police report into Heart’s death says ‘‘unknown assailants’’ are wanted for questioning.
Heart’s family members, who are determined to see her killers brought to justice, are now living in a safe-house, after receiving death threats.
‘‘Ok, enjoy the happiness and bliss because you and your sister will be next. We have eyes always on you,’’ said a text message sent to Arriana.
The family wanted Heart to be buried in Arriana’s floral purple dress, the one Heart kept slipping from a hanger to model in front of a warped mirror.
The funeral director refused, saying Heart was born a man and must be buried in a man’s clothes.
The coffin was closed with her body dressed in a long sleeved shirt and black trousers, her dark hair clipped to the back of her head.
For months Duterte’s war on drugs had been supported by a majority of Filipinos, while widely condemned outside the country, including by a United Nations special envoy who described it as a ‘‘licence to kill’’. But the EJKs have now begun to draw strong criticism from the influential Catholic Church and many civil societies, emboldening Duterte’s political opponents.
- Fairfax/agencies