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Rodrigo Duterte
This Week in AsiaPolitics

Philippines: ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings show Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal presidency isn’t letting up in his last full year

  • Police and soldiers raided the homes and offices of nine activists over the weekend, shooting nine dead and arresting six
  • Human rights experts say incident follows pattern of bloody deaths and abuses of authority throughout president’s administration, which ends in June next year

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Human rights groups say there may have been up to 27,000 extrajudicial killings during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, pictured here in 2018. Photo: Xinhua
Alan Robles
The Sunday slayings of nine activists by Philippine security forces show that in his last full year in office, President Rodrigo Duterte is not letting up on the killing spree he started five years ago.

In what is now being called “Bloody Sunday”, police and soldiers raided the offices and homes of community organisers in provinces near Manila. They shot dead nine of them – including a married couple – and arrested six.

The authorities said caches of weapons and grenades were found, and that the activists were killed because they resisted – allegations that have been met with widespread scepticism. Vice-President Leni Robredo called the raids a “massacre” in a Monday statement. The same day, Renato Reyes, secretary general of the leftist group Bayan, told ANC News : “The [police] narrative that they fought back, nobody believes [that].”

The raids took place two days after Duterte met Philippine security forces in Davao City and urged them to kill communists. “I’ve told the military and the police, if they find themselves in an encounter with the communist rebels and you see them armed, kill them, don’t mind human rights,” he said in comments broadcast on television. “I will be the one to go to prison, I don’t have qualms.”
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In Geneva, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said the body was “appalled by the apparently arbitrary killing of nine activists”, while in Australia, Peter Murphy, chairperson of the global council of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP), did not mince his words.

“Duterte’s words lead directly to [the] murder of Filipinos, he’s out for blood,” he said in a Monday statement. “We are calling on the UN, and member states, to publicly condemn the Bloody Sunday killings and arrests.”

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Deadly shootout ‘misencounter’ involving undercover police and anti-drug agents in Philippines

Deadly shootout ‘misencounter’ involving undercover police and anti-drug agents in Philippines

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque defended the operation on Monday. “Because there’s a war with the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army, killing isn’t forbidden,” he said. “Under international humanitarian law, the president’s order to ‘kill, kill, kill’ is correct. What, you want the soldiers to be killed?”

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