‘Truth’ on killings will soon come out, says De Lima

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Detained Senator Leila de Lima yesterday said that it is now just a matter of time before “the truth” in connection with the spate of killings in the country comes out amid reports from local and international media.

“It is just a matter of time before all of the truth comes out in all its horrifying detail, of how a President took hold of a nation’s consciousness to promote social cleansing as a final solution to the nation’s problems, the same way Hitler hypnotized the German people,” De Lima wrote from her detention at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Quezon City just days after Reuters, citing police officers, reported that cops, not vigilantes, are behind the proliferation of slays since President Rodrigo Duterte took office last year.

“As the truth gradually comes out, let us learn from history and know that final solutions that consist of state-sponsored murders in massive scale, even if not in Holocaust proportions, can only lead to the destruction of a nation’s social, moral and cultural fabric,” she added.

A special report of Reuters quoted a retired intelligence officer and an active senior commander of the Philippine National Police as saying that cops had received cash payments for executing drugs suspects.

The report also mentioned a 26-page report, titled “The State-Sponsored Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines” dated January 26, 2017, detailing how extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country are carried out and funded.

A similar report by the Amnesty International was released in February, which “details how the police have systematically targeted mostly poor and defenseless people across the country while planting ‘evidence,’ recruiting deaths squads, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports,” in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs.

“With DDS insider testimonies coming from former DDS members Arturo Lascañas and Edgar Matobato, as well as confirmation coming from PNP officials, there ought to be no longer any doubt that there exists an international criminal case for crimes against humanity against the President, his PNP Chief and commanders, and high ranking cabinet officials and congressional allies,” said De Lima, who is detained on drug charges.

Matobato and Lascañas both testified in the Senate and claimed that they were part of the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS), whose members were allegedly paid by then Davao City Mayor and now President Rodrigo Duterte to kill criminals and enemies.

“Now that evidence of this continues to surface, we must ask ourselves if we want to go on supporting the carnage,” De Lima said.