Press Release
July 3, 2020

Dispatch from Crame No. 835:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Statement on the Killing of 4 Soldiers by PNP Personnel in Jolo, Sulu

7/3/20

The Jolo rubout of two army officers and two enlisted men is an unfortunate but logical and inevitable consequence of the EJK campaign started by the PNP upon the command of Duterte in 2016.

The power of the PNP to conduct summary executions without any criminal culpability upon Duterte's orders bred and reared monstrous impunity in the past 4 years. It was just a matter of time before this police impunity, recognizing no boundaries, would claim as its latest victims even Army troopers who were previously thought to be safe from marauding PNP hit squads.

The PNP's first victim from the military was Corporal Winston Ragos, who was summarily executed in broad daylight for the infinitesimal offense of violating quarantine rules. His PNP killer is yet to face justice. Army Major Marvin Indammog, Capt. Irwin Managuelod, Sgt. Jaime Velasco, Jr. and Corporal Abdal Asula now join Ragos in this growing list of AFP men summarily killed by the PNP.

Regardless of the reasons for their execution, what is clear is that PNP impunity has reached such levels never seen before since the Marcos dictatorship, that the police now do not even think twice before liquidating even their fellow men in uniform in the AFP, despite the obvious repercussions of angering AFP officialdom as well as its rank-and-file.

AFP officers can no longer close their eyes to the connection between the blank check given by Duterte to the PNP to summarily execute and the cavalier execution by the PNP of their Army brethren, which now include two mistahs. The AFP stayed silent long enough on the PNP's license to kill under Duterte, after their generals themselves became beneficiaries of Duterte's intel fund doleouts and appointments to civilian positions after retirement.

Now that Duterte's PNP monster, in its impunity and hubris, is biting even officers and men of the AFP, the AFP should realize that it cannot go on letting itself to be used by the very man responsible for the PNP's criminal acts. They cannot condemn the murder and honor the death of their men without confronting the bare fact that their own generals were somehow complicit in raising the PNP monster unleashed by Duterte, and which is now devouring their own brothers.

(Access the handwritten copy of Dispatch from Crame No. 835, here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatch_835)

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