A policeman checks the gun recovered from one of two unidentified drug suspects after they were shot dead by police as they tried to evade a checkpoint in Quezon City in this Sept. 6, 2016 photo. (INQUIRER.NET)
There may be no state-sponsored killings in the country, but what is the government doing to stop the killings?
Sen. Grace Poe raised this question when she explained on Tuesday why she did not sign a joint panel report in the Senate that found no proof of state-sponsored killings in the country.
“Maybe the committee report is right — that there’s no state-sponsored EJK, but there could have been more discussions on what the state is doing now to stop it,” Poe said in an interview over ABS-CBN News Channel’s morning show, “Headstart.”
The senator was one of five members of the Senate committees on justice and human rights, and public order and dangerous drugs that investigated the alleged extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country and came up with the report.
The four others who did not sign the report were Senators Leila de Lima, Joseph Victor Ejercito, Antonio Trillanes IV and Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto.
“When you talk about EJKs, there are two things involved there. One, it’s state sponsored. Number two, it’s not state sponsored, but what has the state done to avert it?” Poe explained.
“And I think that now, just with the pronouncements of the President, we need to be able to understand and scrutinize it,” she said, citing Duterte’s own admission that he had killed some people and that he would take the side of the police allegedly involved in a rubout.
The President earlier said that the police involved in the November 5 killing of Albuera, Leyte, Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. would not go to jail despite the National Bureau of Investigation’s findings that it was a rubout.
“So I think those things should have been taken up in the committee hearings. If we said that (former) president Noynoy (Aquino) is ultimately responsible in Mamasapano, I think also with this one, the police also reporting to the President, we need to be able to figure out to what extent did the President direct these officers or said nothing about it,” Poe said.
The senator headed the Senate justice committee that found former President Benigno Aquino III ultimately responsible for the January 2015 Mamasapano incident that left 44 elite policemen dead.