A human rights group has asked the government to investigate retired Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Gen. Debold M. Sinas and officials of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) for their alleged involvement in the March 7, 2021 operations in Southern Tagalog provinces where nine activists died.
The appeal was made by Karapatan after the it was announced that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has filed a murder complaint before the Department of Justice (DOJ) against 17 policemen for the deaths of a couple during the operations which had been dubbed as “Bloody Sunday.”
Karapatan said in a statement:
“As we welcome the filing of murder complaints against the police perpetrators of the killing of Ariel and Ana Mariz Evangelista, we urge the Task Force on Administrative Order 35 to include in their investigations the culpability of officials of NTF-ELCAC and former PNP Chief Debold Sinas who incited and encouraged violence on the organizations of the slain human rights defenders and/or justified the police and military operations in Southern Tagalog on March 7, 2021 which resulted in the killings of nine individuals and the arrest of four rights defenders as ‘legitimate law enforcement operations.’”
Karapatan also said that “the judge who issued the search warrants, and regional and provincial level police and military officials should likewise be held accountable.”
In a statement, the DOJ said the filing of a murder complaint against the 17 policemen “comes as the culmination of months of tireless work on the part of the Administrative Order No. 35 (s. 2012) Special Investigation Team that conducted the investigation and case buildup with the valuable and diligent assistance of the NBI.”
“The DOJ, as chair-agency of the AO 35 Inter-Agency Committee, will now begin the preliminary investigation of the case in earnest, with all due consideration to the families of the victims and the constitutional rights of the alleged perpetrators,” it said.
It said the Evangelista couple were killed in Nasugbu, Batangas while police were serving search warrants against them.
It stressed that “other similar cases involving deaths during the service of search warrants in Southern Tagalog on 07 March 2021 are also progressing towards actionable status in the dockets of the AO 35 Secretariat.”
The AO35 committee is the Inter-Agency Committee on Extra-legal Killings, Enforced Disappearances, Torture and Other Grave Violations of the Rights to Life, Liberty, and Security of Persons. The Administrative Order was issued in 2012.