Gen. Sinas’ promotion as PNP chief is a new high in criminal impunity
Duterte’s appointment of loyalist Gen. Debold Sinas as Philippine National Police (PNP) chief pulls the fascist institution to lowest depths of corruption and moral depredation. Awarding Sinas’ fascism and abuse of power outrages the people, incites greater disgust of the police and stokes further discord within it.
His promotion marks another high in criminal impunity under Duterte. It further emboldens state forces to commit more abuses and atrocities against the people.
The Filipino people are incensed over Gen. Sinas’ appointment despite earning public notoriety for throwing a birthday party which violated the Covid-19 lockdown protocols rigidly implemented by the police. Sinas and his men went unpunished while more than a hundred thousand ordinary citizens were arrested without exception, with a few thousands still in jail.
Gen. Sinas’ Covid-19 mañanita is, however, the least of his transgressions.
He was also behind the police’s high-handed and inhumane treatment toward political detainee Reina Mae Nasino during the wake and burial of her three-month old daughter last month. He was also behind the mass arrest of around 50 activists in Bacolod City and the police raid at the office of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in November 2019, where Nasino was arrested. He was reported to have personally talked to Quezon City Regional Trial Court Judge Cecilyn Burgos-Villavert who issued to questionable search warrants.
Let us not forget his grave crimes against the people during his stint as Central Visayas chief of police in 2019. He directed the bloody counterinsurgency campaigns Oplan Sauron 1 and 2, and Oplan Bran Stark which resulted in the mass killing of 37 red-tagged farmers and local personalities including a barangay captain, city councilor, former mayor, a local official of the Department of Education, and a lawyer.
The vilest crimes in this Sinas-led killing spree include the killing of peasant and transport leader Franklin Lariosa who was summarily executed by policemen in front of his 4-year old child in Barangay Talalac, Sta. Catalina, Negros Oriental on March 29, 2019; and the killing of civilian Marlon Ocampo and his one-year old son, Marjon, in Barangay San Jose in the same town on July 26, 2019.
Sinas’ hands are drenched in the blood of the toiling masses. It is only just for the people to condemn Sinas’ appointment and crimes, raise their voices in protest and demand an end to police and military impunity in the country.