Thẻ: Philippines

Retired officer links Duterte to almost 200 killings

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Al Jazeera

Philippine officer admits to killing 300 people, about 200 as a member of a ‘Davao death squad’.retired Philippine police officer has linked President Rodrigo Duterte – during his time as a mayor  of Davao – and his men to nearly 200 killings that the officer and other members of a “death squad” allegedly carried out.

Arturo Lascanas made the allegations at the start of a nationally televised Senate inquiry on Monday after he admitted to lying in October during another Senate inquiry into alleged extrajudicial killings linked to Duterte.

Lascanas said that he had personally killed 300 people, about 200 as a member of a “Davao death squad”, with his last in 2015. He also detailed two cases where he had murdered critics of Duterte, under the instruction of the then-mayor’s bodyguard. Tiếp tục đọc “Retired officer links Duterte to almost 200 killings” →

Abu Sayyaf video ‘shows beheading of German hostage’

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Philippine army working to confirm reports that Abu Sayyaf fighters beheaded a German man they had seized in November.The army said it had received information reports that the hostage had been executed [EPA]

The Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf armed group has posted a video purportedly showing the beheading of a German man held for three months after demands for a ransom were not met.

The video, reposted on Monday by the monitoring group SITE, showed an elderly captive slumped on a grassy lot and a man holding a knife to his neck.

“Now, they’ll kill me,” the 70-year-old man said before he was executed on Sunday after a ransom demand deadline passed. Tiếp tục đọc “Abu Sayyaf video ‘shows beheading of German hostage’” →

Senator Leila de Lima arrested in the Philippines

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Al Jazeera

Senator and vocal critic of President Duterte faces drug-trafficking charges related to her term as a justice secretary.

De Lima has branded the president a ‘sociopathic serial killer’ after he was accused of ordering drug killings [EPA]

A Philippines senator and staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has been arrested by law enforcement agents after charges were filed in court alleging that she received money from drug dealers inside the country’s prisons.

Senator Leila de Lima is accused of orchestrating a drug-trafficking ring when she was justice secretary during the 2010-2015 administration of Benigno Aquino.

“The truth will come out and I will achieve justice. I am innocent,” she told reporters shortly before law enforcers escorted her away from her office on Friday. Tiếp tục đọc “Senator Leila de Lima arrested in the Philippines” →

Rodrigo Duterte accused of paying police to kill

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Al Jazeera

Philippine president ran a ‘liquidation squad’ as mayor of Davao city targeting drug dealers, alleges former policeman.

A retired Philippine police officer says President Rodrigo Duterte, when he was a mayor, ordered and paid him and other members of a “liquidation squad” to kill criminals and opponents.

The former policeman, Arthur Lascanas, told a news conference on Monday that he was speaking up because he was bothered by his conscience – including his role in the deaths of his two brothers, whom he ordered killed because they were drug users.

“I had my own two brothers killed. Even if I end up dead, I’m content because I’ve fulfilled my promise to the Lord to make a public confession,” he said, breaking into tears. Tiếp tục đọc “Rodrigo Duterte accused of paying police to kill” →

Thousands march against Duterte’s war on drugs

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Al Jareeza
Luis Antonio Tagle, Catholic leader of Manila, said violence cannot be the answer to the country's drug problem [Reuters]
Luis Antonio Tagle, Catholic leader of Manila, said violence cannot be the answer to the country’s drug problem [Reuters]

Thousands of Catholics have gathered in the Philippine capital in a “show of force” to protest extrajudicial killings being carried out under the banner of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

The rally, dubbed the “Walk for Life”, was attended by 20,000 people, organisers said. Manila police estimated the crowd at 10,000.

At the biggest rally yet against the killings, members of one of the nation’s oldest and most powerful institutions prayed and sang hymns as they marched before dawn on Saturday, to condemn a “spreading culture of violence”.

More than 7,000 people have died since Duterte took office almost eight months ago and ordered an unprecedented crime war that has drawn global criticism for alleged human rights abuses.

The move, however, has been popular with many in the mainly Catholic nation.

“We have to stand up. Somehow this is already a show of force by the faithful that they don’t like these extrajudicial killings,” Manila bishop Broderick Pabillo told AFP news agency before addressing the crowd.

“I am alarmed and angry at what’s happening because this is something that is regressive. It does not show our humanity.”

The demonstrators also condemned legislation restoring the death penalty for drug-related crimes and other offences. Tiếp tục đọc “Thousands march against Duterte’s war on drugs” →

Philippine bid to jail nine-year-olds is ‘a great child violation’, Unicef says

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The Guardian

Duterte’s allies have been pushing to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to nine

Children playing on a hill of garbage in the Philippines
Unicef says a nine-year-old is unable to fully comprehend the consequences of a crime. Photograph: Jes Aznar/Getty Images

, Southeast Asia correspondent

Sunday 12 February 2017 22.03 EST Last modified on Sunday 12 February 2017 22.06 EST

A law proposing children as young as nine be jailed for crimes is “wrong from every angle”, the head of the United Nations children’s agency in the Philippines has warned.

“If they grow up, spending their teenage years in a prison, they most probably will be damaged for life,” Unicef’s country representative, Lotta Sylwander, said in a telephone interview from Manila.

The current age of criminal responsibility in the Philippines is 15. President Rodrigo Duterte’s allies have been pushing to lower it, coupled with another draft bill that would restore the death penalty.Politicians opposing the bills say their passing could lead to a situation in which a nine-year-old may be sentenced to death. Tiếp tục đọc “Philippine bid to jail nine-year-olds is ‘a great child violation’, Unicef says” →

A Rare Survivor of a Philippine Drug Raid Takes the Police to Court

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By FELIPE VILLAMOR FEB. 10, 2017

Maria Belen Daa, 61, with a photo of her son Marcelo, 31, in the Philippines last week. He was shot along with four others by the police, who raided his home looking for drugs last August. Jes Aznar for The New York Times

MANILA — The drug raid ended like so many others in the Philippines, with all the suspects shot by the police.

But one of them, Efren Morillo, a 28-year-old fruit and vegetable vendor, did not die.

As the only known survivor of a so-called buy-bust operation, Mr. Morillo has provided a chilling first-person account that challenges the government’s assertion that the thousands of suspects killed in President Rodrigo Duterte’s antidrug campaign were killed by the police in self-defense. And his testimony lies at the heart of the first court case to challenge that campaign.

According to his sworn affidavit, none of the five suspects were drug users and none were armed.

The police took two of them, including Mr. Morillo, inside a house, handcuffed, Mr. Morillo said. Three others were lined up at a clearing near a ravine, ordered to kneel, their hands tied behind their backs.

There was begging and crying as the police shot each man at close range, Mr. Morillo said.

“Thoroughly frightened that I might be shot again, I closed my eyes and played dead,” he said. As he lay on the floor bleeding, he said, he overheard the police officers talking about planting guns and drugs because they had found none there.

When the police officers left the house, he took a chance and fled.

Duterte Gives ‘Rotten’ Officers Choice: Go to Terrorist Hotbed or Go Home

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By FELIPE VILLAMOR FEB. 7, 2017

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines assailed police officers during a live broadcast on Tuesday. Robinson Ninal/Presidential Photographers Division, via Associated Press

MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines angrily dressed down more than 200 police officers on national television on Tuesday, presenting them with a thorny ultimatum: Resign or be shipped off to a terrorist hotbed known for beheadings and attacks on police stations.

Mr. Duterte accused the 228 officers of a litany of criminal and professional misdeeds, including corruption, drug use and dealing, and, in one high-profile case, the kidnapping and murder of a South Korean businessman.

Calling the group of National Police officers from Manila, the capital, “rotten to the core,” Mr. Duterte said he was ordering them to Basilan, an island in the country’s restive south and home to the Islamic terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf.

Philippine communist rebels to end unilateral cease-fire

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Japan Times

AP Feb 1, 2017

MANILA – Philippine communist rebels said Wednesday they were terminating their unilateral cease-fire after accusing the government of failing to release all political prisoners and encroaching on rebel-held areas.

The Communist Party of the Philippines and its military arm, the New People’s Army, said that the Aug. 28 cease-fire will expire Feb. 10. The rebels and the government had separately declared a cease-fire as they resumed their peace talks.

The rebels said they continue to support peace negotiations. Founded in 1968, the rural-based guerrillas have unsuccessfully tried to negotiate an end to their rebellion and their inclusion in government with six Philippine presidents, including Rodrigo Duterte. Tiếp tục đọc “Philippine communist rebels to end unilateral cease-fire” →

Southeast Asia not a ‘proxy’ for superpower rivalry: Philippines

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ChannelNewsAsia

  • Posted 23 Jan 2017 23:34
  • Updated 23 Jan 2017 23:40

Philippine Defence Minister Delfin Lorenzana addresses the Fullerton Forum at the Shangri-La Dialogue Sherpa Meeting, organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in Singapore on January 23, 2017. (Photo: AFP / ROSLAN RAHMAN)

SINGAPORE: The Philippines Monday (Jan 23) told major global powers that Southeast Asia was not a “proxy” for superpower rivalries, as Washington and Beijing compete for influence in the region.

Conflicting claims over the South China Sea, which straddles vital commercial shipping lanes and is believed to sit atop vast natural gas deposits, have placed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the centre of the struggle for regional influence among countries such as the United States and China. Tiếp tục đọc “Southeast Asia not a ‘proxy’ for superpower rivalry: Philippines” →

Philippines defense chief calls China arms on South China Sea islands ‘troubling’

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Japan Times

Reuters, Jan 17, 2017

MANILA – China’s recent installation of weapons on artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea was “very troubling”, the Philippines’ defense minister said Tuesday, after Manila quietly protested Beijing’s activities.

The Philippine Foreign Ministry sent a note verbale to the Chinese Embassy last month after confirming a report from the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies about China’s arms buildup in the Spratlys. Tiếp tục đọc “Philippines defense chief calls China arms on South China Sea islands ‘troubling’” →

Philippines rights body to probe Duterte killing boast

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ChannelNewsAsia

  • Posted 23 Dec 2016 02:31
  • Updated 23 Dec 2016 02:40

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. (Photo: AFP/Wallace Woon)

MANILA: The Philippines’ independent rights watchdog said on Thursday (Dec 22) it will investigate President Rodrigo Duterte’s boasts he killed criminals years ago, invoking a strong rebuke from the Filipino leader against a United Nations official who called for the murder probe.

Duterte, who is waging an anti-drugs war that has left thousands dead, said last week that he helped police kill three suspected kidnappers early in the first of his several terms as mayor of the southern city of Davao. Tiếp tục đọc “Philippines rights body to probe Duterte killing boast” →

Rodrigo Duterte of Philippines Calls U.N. Human Rights Chief an ‘Idiot’

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“You there in the United Nations, you do not know diplomacy,” Mr. Duterte said. “You do not know how to behave, to be an employee of the United Nations. You do not talk to me like that, you son of a bitch.”

Mr. Duterte’s denunciations were directed at Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, who called on Tuesday for the authorities in the Philippines to begin an investigation after Mr. Duterte boasted about personally gunning down criminal suspects while mayor of Davao City.

Continue reading on New York Times

Philippines Should Investigate Rodrigo Duterte for Murder, U.N. Official Urges

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By NICK CUMMING-BRUCEDEC. 20, 2016

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, center, during a visit to Singapore this month. Mr. Duterte has said that he killed people when he was mayor of the city of Davao. Wong Maye-E/Associated Press

GENEVA — President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines should be formally investigated by judicial authorities in his country for murder after he claimed to have personally killed people suspected of committing crimes, the top human rights official at the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The official, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, was responding to comments that Mr. Duterte made at a news conference on Friday in which he said that he had shot and killed “about three” men during his years as mayor of the southern city of Davao.

Continue reading on New York Times

U.S. withholds aid to Philippines after Duterte boasts of looking for people to kill

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Japan Times

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrives for a meeting Wednesday in Phnom Penh. The U.S. said Thursday it is withholding a major aid package to the Philippines and is deeply troubled by a boast from the nation’s leader that he used to drive around looking for criminals to kill. | AP

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AP

Washington – The United States said Thursday it is withholding a major aid package to the Philippines and is deeply troubled by a boast from the nation’s leader that he used to drive around looking for criminals to kill.

It was the latest sign of strain in U.S.-Philippine relations since President Rodrigo Duterte launched a crackdown on illegal drugs has led to thousands of deaths in police gunbattles. Tiếp tục đọc “U.S. withholds aid to Philippines after Duterte boasts of looking for people to kill” →