{"id":10312,"date":"2024-11-08T00:05:55","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T23:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=10312"},"modified":"2024-11-07T01:01:55","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T00:01:55","slug":"senate-hearing-rodrigo-duterte-makes-concessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/senate-hearing-rodrigo-duterte-makes-concessions\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate hearing: Rodrigo Duterte makes concessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

So far, former President Rodrigo Duterte has not participated in the hearings of the so-called \u201cQuad-Committee\u201d of the Philippine House of Representatives on extrajudicial killings in the context of his anti-drug campaign but made<\/a> a shocking statement as part of a similar investigation in the Senate.<\/p>\n

On October 28, 2024, Duterte told<\/a> the Senate subcommittee (\u201cBlue Ribbon Committee\u201d) that he had ordered the police under his command to \u201cencourage\u201d suspects to fight back so that the police would have an excuse to kill them. According to his statement, Duterte took<\/a> \u201cfull legal and moral responsibility\u201d for \u201csuccesses and mistakes\u201d of his government’s \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d However, Duterte denied<\/a> that the \u201ckilling\u201d was government policy or that he had ordered<\/a> killings. Duterte also confirmed<\/a> that during his term as mayor of Davao City, he employed a group of criminals (\u201cDavao Death Squad\u201d) to kill other criminals.<\/p>\n

Duterte also emphasized<\/a> in the hearing that he had tried to tackle the problem of illegal drugs decisively and without compromise. He admitted<\/a> that his anti-drug campaign also had flaws. However, in the same hearing, Duterte explicitly denied<\/a> his responsibility for the death of teenager Kian delos Santos in 2017. Duterte emphasized<\/a> that the killing of delos Santos was an individual police misconduct.<\/p>\n

Senator Risa Hontiveros already emphasized<\/a> on October 18, 2024, that a separate Senate investigation was a \u201ccomplement\u201d to the current investigations of the \u201cQuad-Committee\u201d. However, Carlos Conde from the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) previously doubted<\/a> that the Senate hearing would lead to accountability, as it was initiated by Duterte’s allies.<\/p>\n

Previously<\/a>, Senator Dela Rosa had confirmed that Duterte would attend the hearing, regardless of who presided over it. Members of the House of Representatives expressed<\/a> concerns in advance about involving Dela Rosa, a former police chief under Duterte, in the investigations. He would \u201cpractically be investigating himself.\u201d This would be \u201chighly inappropriate,\u201d said Dan Fernandez, one of the chairmen of the \u201cQuad-Committee.\u201d Senate President Francis Escudero also stated<\/a> that the investigation should take place in a different committee, as Dela Rosa is considered the \u201carchitect\u201d of the campaign.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So far, former President Rodrigo Duterte has not participated in the hearings of the so-called \u201cQuad-Committee\u201d of the Philippine House of Representatives on extrajudicial killings in the context of his anti-drug campaign but made a shocking statement as part of a similar investigation in the Senate. On October 28, 2024, Duterte told the Senate subcommittee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,73,58,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-on-drugs-en","category-aktuelles-en","category-human-rights-news","category-internal-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10312"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10333,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10312\/revisions\/10333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}