The Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has created a task force to reinvestigate the killings under Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. But the credibility, and even sincerity, of this task force is in question because a similar task force that had been created before this achieved virtually nothing.
The DOJ confirmed on Wednesday, November 6, that Secretary Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla approved the creation of a drug war task force that will probe, and then build and file cases in relation to drug war extrajudicial killings.
The task force is chaired by a senior assistant state prosecutor, and co-headed by a regional prosecutor with nine members from the National Prosecution Service (NPS).
“So our prosecutors are there to give the law enforcement agencies the necessary backup in terms of legal knowledge, strategies, and probably guiding them into what kind of evidence is needed in any particular case that they intend to file,” newly-appointed Prosecutor General Richard Fadullon told reporters on Wednesday.
A drug war reinvestigation meant to file cases related to EJK was opened as early as 2020 by the Duterte-time DOJ, and this panel spilled over to the time of Marcos under Remulla.
But the unimpressive results of the Duterte-time panel did not improve under Marcos, so that by the time the House committee on human rights (the precursor to the creation of the viral quad committee) was already investigating, the panel had closed most of the showcase cases without having filed a criminal complaint, a Rappler investigation found.
Remulla’s newest task force has a specific mandate this time to “closely coordinate and assist” the quad committee and the Senate blue ribbon committee, which are both investigating Duterte’s war on drugs.
The DOJ added that as may be required, a team from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) may be used by this task force. This again is not a new feature because the earlier panel was teamed up with the NBI, too. This previous DOJ-NBI teamup had already frustrated human rights groups.
An international community influence?
“We can’t help but be skeptical on this new Department on Justice drug war task force, if it will truly pursue justice and accountability considering its previous record of nonchalance on the calls of the victims and their families,” Karapatan secretary general Tinay Palabay said.
For Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior researcher Carlos Conde, the creation of the new task force was in accordance with the human rights group’s recommendation. Although enforcement will measure the body’s effectiveness, Conde said he’s “optimistic” since the task force has a very specific mandate and “somewhat” clear objectives.
“It is led by the DOJ and the NBI and so eliminates the police as a leader of any investigation surrounding the drug war killings. That is important because, as we keep saying, the police should — and can’t — investigate itself,” Conde told Rappler.
Conde noted that the task force should also look into the roles of prosecutors in the “cover-up” of cases in the drug war and other issues where prosecutors had been implicated. He added that the new body has the tough job of eliminating any doubts about its seriousness by providing some semblance of accountability.
Apart from politics, the HRW senior researcher said the international community and organizations like the United Nations, might have had a role in “impressing” on Marcos the need to address the killings through the task force.
“If the new TF [task force] does its job properly, that should be the outcome — to finally investigate these cases. This TF has a potential to put on track the state’s responses to the drug war, which is to investigate, prosecute and see that cases prosper in court,” Conde added.
The big picture
So, what value does this task force add?
At least two task forces were created under the last two administrations to address the problems in killings, but both turned out to be unsuccessful.
“In a word, those have been failures, as you and other media have amply demonstrated. Those initiatives have failed their respective missions,” Conde said.
Late former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III signed Administrative Order (AO) No. 35 and created a task force to probe political killings or deaths of people with known advocacies or political causes. The AO did not do much, especially under Duterte, because at around 2017, the body recorded zero cases despite the continuous killings in the drug war at the time. This was mostly due to government agents refusing to acknowledge a case as a political killing, therefore not putting them under the special panel.
The AO was also applied to the “Bloody Sunday” killings, where at least nine activists were killed, and six others were arrested in March 2021. However, the two complaints filed against cops for the deaths of couple Ariel Evangelista and Ana Mariz “Chai” Lemita-Evangelista and labor leader Manny Asuncion were both junked.
Would this new task force be the successful one, finally? At the very least, victims and human rights advocates hope it can at least be the honest one. – Rappler.com