MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to kill armed rebels was legal, his spokesman said on Monday as Catholic leaders joined the condemnation of the killings of nine activists in separate weekend attacks on suspected insurgents. .
Human rights groups are furious about the deaths of what they say were legitimate activists under the guise of insurgency operations, which took place two days after Duterte told security forces that they could kill rebels if they held a gun and ‘ignored human rights’. .
“The president’s ‘kill, kill, kill’ order is legal because it is aimed at armed rebels,” his spokesman Harry Roque said in a briefing, adding that the government would still investigate the incident.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, an influential church group, denounced in a statement the use of what he calls unnecessary violence and violence during “Bloody Sunday”.
On Sunday, Lieutenant-General Antonio Parlade, head of an anti-rebel task force, told Reuters the raids were a legitimate law enforcement measure, and authorities searched warrants for firearms and explosives.
Activists said the raids were reminiscent of police operations in which thousands of people were killed as part of Duterte’s ongoing war on drugs, in which police said all the victims were armed and had not been arrested.
Among those killed was a coordinator from Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, a left-wing group that put an end to ‘red labels’, using to label opponents as communists or terrorists to justify them, dating back to the reign of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Human Rights Watch said the government’s anti-insurgency campaign no longer distinguished between armed rebels and non-combatant activists, labor leaders and rights defenders.
Since coming to power in 2016, Duterte has seen his efforts to bring peace to Maoist rebels repeatedly derail, causing frequent outbursts and threats to wipe them out.
(This story seeks to correct the order of the misplaced word ‘kill’ in paragraph 1)
(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Martin Petty)