IV. Background

Legacy of Violence

Mindanao, the largest of the Philippines’ southern islands, has been a focal point for insurgencies and conflict for decades. Militant Muslim groups, communist insurgents, government security forces, and government-backed militias and “vigilante groups” have all been responsible for numerous serious human rights abuses—including abductions, torture and killings—against suspected adversaries and ordinary civilians.

Since 1969 the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has been fighting to topple the Philippine government.[1] The communist insurgency reached its greatest strength in the mid-1980s, prior to the “People Power” revolution of 1986 that removed then President Ferdinand Marcos from power. During that period, Mindanao was one of the hotbeds of the NPA insurgency. NPA forces have been responsible for numerous abuses, including targeted killings of persons whom they identify as “enemies,” and the use of violence to extort businesses and individuals.[2] So-called “sparrow units” have summarily executed those cited for “crimes against people,” such as criminals, military informants and abusive police officers.[3]

Since the early 1970s, the Philippine government also has been engaged in an intermittent armed conflict with Muslim separatist groups in Mindanao.[4] The conflict has resulted in the death of an estimated 120,000 people, mostly civilians, and displacement of some two million more. A shaky peace currently exists. More radical groups such as the Abu Sayyaf Group emerged in the 1990s and have been responsible for numerous bombings and other attacks on civilians, primarily in Mindanao and other southern islands.[5]

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) have for many years been implicated in insurgency-related human rights violations. In a June 2007 report, “Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines,” Human Rights Watch documented the involvement of government security forces in the extrajudicial killing of leftist politicians and activists, journalists, outspoken clergy, anti-mining activists, and agricultural reform activists. Only a handful of the perpetrators of such killings have ever been convicted.

To fight the NPA insurgents, the government has long relied on the use of poorly trained paramilitary forces such as the Civilian Home Defense Force and its successor, the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGU). These armed militias have tortured and murdered people they believed support or sympathize with the NPA. By operating outside the military chain of command, they also have given the armed forces a level of “deniability” for serious abuses they commit.[6]

The government has also actively enlisted so-called vigilante groups to fight the NPA. By popular legend, the birth of modern vigilantism in the Philippines traces back to Davao City. In April 1987, in a slum in Davao City, three former rebels shot to death a notorious NPA assassin. This group, called Alsa Masa (“Masses Arise”), prospered thanks to deep public resentment against the NPA, which had killed numerous people, many in error, in a violent internal purge starting in late 1985 and alienated once supportive populations.[7]

With the endorsement of then President Corazon Aquino and under the patronage of a local military commander, Lt. Col. Franco Calida, Alsa Masa rapidly expanded, using coercive recruiting methods and extortion. They required each household to provide a member for their nightly patrols, and painted homes of those who didn’t comply with an “X.” Jun Pala, a radio broadcaster who was an early supporter of Alsa Masa, routinely threatened Alsa Masa critics with retribution.

In many areas throughout the Philippines, local military commanders created and provided arms to vigilante groups, hoping to emulate Davao City’s counterinsurgency experiment with Alsa Masa.[8] A wide variety of vigilante groups were reported in the provinces of North Cotabato, Misamis Occidental, and Zamboanga Del Sur in Mindanao and on the islands of Negros, Cebu, and Leyte, among other areas. When these groups invariably became involved in serious abuses, enthusiasm steadily waned and they disappeared in the 1990s.

Problem of Illicit Drugs

The Philippine government has been battling drug syndicates for decades. The country has the highest estimated methamphetamine prevalence rate in the world, and continues to be a producer, consumer, and transshipment point for methamphetamine.[9] Illicit drug laboratories, which used to be found in or near Metropolitan Manila, are now found in various parts of the country, including Mindanao. In one such discovery, the authorities found a laboratory in Zamboanga City in Mindanao in February 2008 that reportedly had the capacity to produce 1,000 kilograms of methamphetamine each month.[10]

In 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, the authorities identified 249 local drug groups and eight transnational drug groups operating in the country, up sharply from the 149 local and seven transnational groups identified in 2006. There was no reason given for the surge. They also cited “intelligence reports” as indicating that illegal drugs from foreign countries were entering through coastal areas in central and southern Philippines.At the same time, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency reported a decreasing number of patients treated at various drug-rehabilitation facilities, again without offering explanation or analysis.[11]

A 2007 US State Department report concluded that “corruption, low morale, inadequate resources and salaries, and lack of cooperation between police and prosecutors” were hampering drug prosecutions in the Philippines. It noted that the slow process of prosecuting cases demoralizes law enforcement personnel and permits drug dealers to continue their drug business while awaiting court dates. It said the leading cause for the dismissal of cases is the non-appearance of prosecution witnesses, including police officers.[12] Davao City, an urban center of Mindanao, is a major market for illicit drugs.

Davao City

In the 1970s and 1980s, Davao City was known as the “murder capital” of the Philippines. Communist insurgents and government security forces killed each other in the daytime on Davao City’s streets. NPA assassins killed corrupt police officers, suspected informants, and drug dealers. The Agdao district of Davao City became a communist bastion known as “Nicaragdao” (after Sandinista-led Nicaragua), where the NPA routinely committed targeted killings.[13]

The NPA was largely driven out of Davao City by the late 1980s. The government claimed that Alsa Masa and other vigilante groups were chiefly responsible, but the NPA’s demise also has been explained as due to a bloody internal purge in the NPA that left its ranks shattered. The NPA’s decline in Davao City was repeated throughout the Philippines in the ensuing decade.[14] In the words of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the NPA today remains a low-level threat.[15]

In recent years, Davao City has developed into a sprawling urban metropolis of 1.44 million residents, and a business, investment, and tourism hub for the southern Philippines. It has attracted a large number of economic migrants from all over Mindanao and elsewhere in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands are unable to find stable jobs and end up in crowded slum areas. They include an estimated 3,000 street children[16]—40 to 50 percent of whom are girls—who roam the streets of Davao City to make money and avoid physical abuse at home. Many join youth gangs for bonding and survival.[17]

A resurgence of violence by Islamist groups in Mindanao has left its mark in Davao City. On March 4, 2003, a bomb exploded in a waiting shelter just outside Davao International Airport, killing 22 people and injuring 143 others. Within days, an Abu Sayyaf Group commander claimed responsibility for the attack. On April 2, 2003, a bomb hit the Davao Sasa Wharf, the main dock for Davao City, killing 17 and injuring 56. Several alleged members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf Group were soon arrested.[18]

Southern Mindanao, which includes Davao City, has also seen a resurgence in extrajudicial killings by members of the armed forces and the police against leftist activists, journalists, and others deemed to be NPA supporters, part of a larger nationwide increase in such killings. As elsewhere in the Philippines, impunity for such crimes is the norm: rarely do the authorities prosecute members of the military or police for extrajudicial killings, and few cases result in arrests, even fewer in convictions.

Davao’s Mayor Rodrigo Duterte

Rodrigo Duterte was first elected mayor in 1988 on a campaign to reinstate peace and order in Davao City. Before running for office, Duterte had built his reputation as a city prosecutor by targeting military and rebel abuses with equal fervor. The son of a former provincial governor, Duterte said his father taught him that elected officials must serve the greater good no matter what it takes, like a father protecting and disciplining his family.[19]

Duterte’s rise as a prominent political figure coincided with a significant change in the dynamic between local officials and the police in the Philippines. As discussed in chapter X, two laws enacted in 1990-91 provided city mayors and provincial governors greater operational control over their police forces.

Under Duterte’s rule, crime rates in the city dropped to among the lowest in the country. According to the Davao City official website:

From a 3-digit crime rate per 10,000 people in 1985, Davao has reached an almost Utopian [sic] environment with a monthly crime volume of 0.8 cases per 10,000 persons from 1999 up to 2005. Digging through the records, it would reveal that about 90% of these cases reported are petty crimes that do not in any way threaten the over-all peace and order condition of the city.[20]

These descriptions attempt to conceal a rampant crime wave—namely, the murder of hundreds of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children.

More importantly, by averaging out years of statistics and omitting most recent years, they belie the city’s sharp upward trend in crime rates over the last decade. According to statistics from the police, between 1999 and 2008, the population in Davao City grew from 1.12 million to 1.44 million, or by 29 percent. Meanwhile, the number of annual crime incidents during this period rose from 975 to 3,391, or by 248 percent.[21] These numbers show that, contrary to the city government’s self-proclaimed success, its tough anti-crime campaign has failed to curve crime rates. An increasing number of death squad killings appears to have contributed to worsening crime rates in the city.

Local activists say death squad killings of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children in Davao City started sometime in the mid-1990s, during Duterte’s second term as mayor. The group that claimed to be responsible for the killings was called Suluguon sa Katawhan or “Servants of the People,” among other names, but soon the media in Davao City began referring to it the Davao Death Squad (DDS).[22]

By mid-1997, local media already had attributed more than 60 unsolved murders to the group, observing that the death squad had adopted the urban warfare tactics used in the 1980s by NPA “sparrow squad” hit teams. One source revealed that the death squad then had at least 10 members then, mostly former members of the NPA who had surrendered to the government.[23] The death squad grew dramatically since—one insider estimates the number of current members at about 500 (see chapter VIII).[24]

These killings have not been unpopular. According to a local human rights organization, fear and public frustration at “the arduous and ineffective judicial system” have made summary executions seem a “practical resort” to suppress crime in Davao City.[25]

Duterte, who has now been mayor for two decades, with a short interval as a congressman, has been given endearing nicknames by the media, such as “The Punisher,” “The Enforcer,” and “Dirty Harry” for his anti-crime campaign.[26] His policies have garnered public support in Davao City. It is thus perhaps no surprise that in recent years, reports of targeted killings of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children have emerged in the nearby cities of General Santos City, Digos City, and Tagum City in Mindanao as well as in Cebu City on the central island of Cebu.[27]

Targeted Killings in Mindanao and Beyond

While the focus of this report is on alleged death squad activities in Davao City, Human Rights Watch also conducted field research in Digos City and General Santos City. The research demonstrated that targeted killings in these cities partly started out of efforts by the Davao Death Squad to track down individuals who had left Davao City for the presumed safety of neighboring locales. But such targeted killings —that now involve locally-based killers— appears to reflect local government support and possible direct participation in politically popular if highly abusive anti-crime measures.

Human Rights Watch is also worried by the news of targeted killings of suspected criminals in cities outside of Mindanao. Among the cities of particular concern is Cebu City. The media in Cebu City treat the existence of a death squad in the city as a matter of fact, just as their counterparts in Davao City do. News archives from as early as 2003-2004 show articles on apparent targeted killings of suspected criminals.

In his response to a letter from Human Rights Watch, Cebu City Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña described a pattern of killings in Cebu similar to those in Davao City. In relation to 202 cases[28] registered in the city from December 2004 to September 2008, he noted:

The majority are categorized as “summary/vigilante Style of Killings” for the perpetrators are usually unknown, riding in motorcycles and wearing masks, bonnets or helmets. Information gathered during the investigation revealed that most of the victims are either having criminal records or ex-convicts, fraternity members or suspected to be involved in drug syndicate.[29]

Osmeña emphasized the efforts of law enforcement bodies to investigate and prosecute the cases, but did not provide details of these efforts beyond noting that “some cases were filed in court and now [are] pending ... resolution for the suspects [who] were identified and arrested.”[30]