Summary executions

EDITORIAL

Two Manila-based policemen have claimed that summary executions involving police officers are still prevalent and come in different forms. Some policemen do it for money, while others believe they are doing it to get rid of criminals, according to an investigative media report.

Sources said the objective is to silence whoever police think are “headaches” of society, referring to suspected criminals. Usually, they are the recidivists who have been in and out of jail.

Performing black operations, called diskarte (when carrying out the order), “depends on the environment.” If the environment is favorable to the police, the executioners could easily snatch the target.

Another source said it is easier to silence a target if he or she has a pending warrant of arrest. Once the subject is under custody, police officers ensure that the job is clean. The suspects could silence the subject by gunshots or suffocation with the use of a plastic bag, an operation called suputin.

The cleanest form of killing is by putting handcuffs on the victim and stabbing him with an ice pick that causes internal bleeding, thus is not messy and with less struggle. There are many ways to dispose of the body. Some use laot, which is throwing the body into a river, some bury the dead, or chop the body to pieces.

Another form of special operations is called latag or a scenario in police parlance, where police officers invent a shootout with their targets. Policemen plant guns or grenades and illegal drugs to bolster their case.

Sources said the installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras has made it more difficult for cops to spirit away their targets.

Human rights advocates maintain summary executions should be rejected because killing without due process is murder and not swift justice.

It becomes more dangerous, they said, when law enforcers do it since they are mandated to uphold the law.

Carlos Conde of Human Rights Watch and Dante Jimenez of Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) said summary executions signify a weak justice system. But instead of looking at it as an alternative solution, supporters of summary killings should understand the root of the problem.

Acceptance would only lead to a “wild wild west” situation where use of violence would be justified. “Anything that is not done with due process is questionable. Wild wild West kalalabasan nito. Any Filipino now who feels that justice system does not work for them is now justified to use violence,” Conde said.

There is a problem in the criminal justice system but to fix that is to ensure that due process prevails, Conde added. Jimenez said some resort to “shortcuts” because of frustration or desperation. “Due to the slowness and weakness of the system, they end up taking revenge. That’s the danger of very weak penal law.”

Conde said looking at summary executions as swift justice is a very simplistic view, even as he challenged supporters of extrajudicial executions to prove that it’s an effective means of addressing problems in the penal system. “It does not solve the problem,” said Conde.