House Speaker Prospero Nograles has filed a bill seeking to make “salvaging or extrajudicial killing” by lawmen a heinous crime in the light of killings reportedly done by a death squad in Davao.

In filing House Bill 6601, which he intends to call “Anti-Salvaging Law,” Nograles said the House no longer needs to conduct an inquiry on the raging controversy on the “genocide-like” executions in Davao.

“Extrajudicial killings or salvaging is abominable and should not be ignored or tolerated. The inaction, inability or unwillingness to solve extrajudicial killings by public officers despite the availability of peace and order and intelligence funds and other resources at their disposal constitute negligence or dereliction of duty to serve the people,” Nograles said in his explanatory
note.

Davao City is now at the center of an investigation by the Human Rights Commission under Chairman Leila De Lima following reports of over 800 victims of summary executions in the city since 1998. All of the victims, two of them members of the media, were assassinated by armed men who are alleged members of the Davao Death Squad.

Recently, the CHR dug up what are believed to be human remains at the Laud Quarry and Firing Range at the Ma-a district in Davao City owned by a former Davao City policeman known as a henchman of a ranking Davao City official. Found together with the human remains are government-issued plate numbers.

Even as the CHR is investigating death squad killings, a 33-year-old man named Michael Bestudio was gunned down last July 10 by armed men believed to have a connection with the DDS. Bestudio is employed as a “pulot boy” at the Laud Quarry and Firing Range.

“This shows the cold-blooded brutality of the people behind these killings. They fear no one, including the CHR,” Nograles said.

He said summary killings persist in Davao City in other parts of the country leading to a need for the an “Anti-Salvaging Law.”

“At present, the Philippines is one of the countries with the highest number of outstanding cases of extrajudicial killings or salvaging which remained unsolved for decades and the perpetrators left unpunished,” Nograles said.

“Thus, if money is taken out of public treasury for peace and order purposes, satisfactory results must be produced not only in the investigation and prosecution of crimes but also in the prevention of extrajudicial killings or salvaging,” he said.

Under HB 6601, there will be a presumption of administrative negligence on any public officer, person in authority or agent of a person in authority except in areas of conflict or combat zones “if there is an increase in the number of extrajudicial killing or salvaging in his area of responsibility, as determined by the Commission on Human Rights, despite the continuous allocation and disbursement of peace and order and intelligence funds or similar allocations from the local government to such public office, person in authority or agent of a person in authority.”