By Eloisa Lopez and Martin Petty
MANILA, July 12 (Reuters) - When Jocelyn Marquez found her
missing son, he was in a Manila morgue, his body riddled with
bullet wounds.
John Ryan Marquez, 24, was shot dead at the weekend by
Philippine police who said he was a drug dealer who pulled a gun
on undercover officers posing as buyers.
Less than a year earlier, Marquez, a motorcycle taxi driver,
had appeared on a controversial "watch list" of alleged drug
users and reported to the authorities to seek rehabilitation.
His mother is struggling to accept the police version of
events, but is too scared and too poor to challenge it.
"We are so poor, sometimes we have nothing but cooking oil
and soy sauce to eat with rice. How could he possible sell
drugs?," Marquez said, sitting beside her son's coffin at his
wake.
"I want to fight for him but I'm scared that whoever did
this will come back for us."
It's a scenario that has played out thousands of times
during President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs, so often
that the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday approved a
resolution to set up a investigation. The resolution followed international lobbying by Filipino
lawyers and activists, whose calls for accountability and police
scrutiny have been largely ignored at home, attracting fierce
resistance and vilification by Duterte and his diehard support
base.
Rights groups have hailed the U.N. vote as a small but
significant step towards accountability for what they say amount
to crimes against humanity - systematic cover-ups, planted
evidence and summary killings by police operating with impunity.
"At the very least, this creates new space to put pressure
on. We hope this renewed scrutiny can focus some attention here
so the perpetrators will think twice or three times before doing
what they do," Chito Gascon, chairman of the Philippine
Commission on Human Rights, told Reuters.
"There's now a platform for alternative voices... This puts
the government on notice - the international community is
watching."
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet will report her
findings to the council in June 2020.
STOP THE KILLINGS
The investigation is being welcomed by victims, including
Emily Soriano, whose 15-year-old son, Angelito, was among seven
people killed in a house by masked men looking for a suspected
drug dealer.
"I know this will not be quick and easy, but we are hoping
that we can get justice over time," said Soriano.
"For now, I just hope the killings will stop."
Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo lashed out over the
decision to investigate, calling it "intrusive abuse" by the
West.
He said Filipinos overwhelming backed Duterte and were
"grossly and thoroughly insulted" by a resolution that was based
on a distorted accounts of how his war on drugs was being
fought.
The authorities deny that executions have taken place and
say all 6,600 people killed by police were drug suspects who
were all armed and had resisted arrest.
Duterte has previously told police to kill "idiots" who
refuse to go quietly, and in February warned his signature
campaign could get even bloodier in the second half of his
presidency. Human rights groups say Duterte's bellicose rhetoric has
created an enabling environment for as many as 27,000
drug-related killings to take place during his presidency, and
regard as suspicious a pattern of mysterious and largely
unsolved murders of alleged users and peddlers. The authorities
deny any involvement.
Among those deaths was Amelia Faustino, 43, shot dead in the
street 10 days ago, a year after being released from a
three-year prison sentence for drugs offences.
Her mother, Rosita, sitting next to her daughter's casket at
her wake, said she voted for Duterte and supported his
governance.
"I don't blame anyone but the man who killed my daughter,"
she said.
Duterte has yet to say whether he would give approval for
international investigators to operate in the Philippines.
His spokesman said such a probe would be humiliating for
investigators and the 18 countries that backed the resolution,
because they would find no evidence of atrocities.
Ronald dela Rosa, an outspoken senator and Duterte's top
commander in the bloodiest chapter of the war on drugs, said
investigators were welcome because allegations of extrajudicial
executions and state-backed killings were nonsense.
"You come here and cut my head off if this is
state-sponsored," he told reporters. "End of conversation."