Culture of accountability urged
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III on Wednesday twitted Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla for claiming before the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that there is no culture of impunity in the Philippines.
Pimentel said that the number of unsolved crimes, particularly murders, contradicted Remulla’s contention during his speech at the UNHRC gathering in Geneva on Tuesday.
“Those unsolved violent crimes mostly involved the poor and the voiceless. Even nonpolitical violent crimes, if left unsolved, contribute to this culture of impunity,” Pimentel told the Inquirer.
Three years after the start of the administration of former Presidet Rodrigo Duterte, in June 2019, the Philippine National Police admitted a total of more than 6,600 people linked to the illegal drug trade were killed in the PNP’s “Operation Tokhang” from 2016.
Of the 6,600 killings, the Department of Justice only managed to investigate around 50 cases and state prosecutors were only able to successfully prosecute one case—that of Kian de los Santos, Carl Arnaiz and Reynaldo de Guzman.
To date, that is the only case to have been properly “solved” by the government.
In October 2020, the UNHRC gave the government a chance and made recommendations that the government pledged to address.
But only days after the government promised compliance with the UNHRC recommendations, then PNP chief Camilo Cascolan, now an undersecretary of the Department of Health, reported that even more were killed during his watch.
In an “accomplishment” report in November 2020, Cascolan reported that Operation Tokhang’s death toll had risen to 7,987 killed by the end of October of that year.
“This is dangerous,” Pimentel said on Wednesday, “because the deterrent effect of our criminal laws and the entire justice system will lose its strength in our society. We don’t want to degenerate into a chaotic and practically lawless society.”
The son and namesake of the late senator and human rights lawyer, Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., said Remulla should not make use of the development in the case of murdered broadcaster Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa to make such bold pronouncement.
The National Bureau of Investigation had recently filed a murder case against several individuals, among them is suspended Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, for allegedly plotting the killing of Mabasa.
Said Pimentel: “A culture is made up of thousands, if not millions, of practices. One successful solution to a violent crime does not change immediately the culture of impunity to a culture of accountability.”
“But it may be the first step because as the saying goes, ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,’” he added.
Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara expressed his support for Remulla’s initiatives to institute reforms in the country’s judicial system.
“I believe we have a working, albeit, highly imperfect justice system,” Angara said. “The system could move faster and be more inclusive and fair.”