EJK victims pray for justice
Nine years after her partner and his father were shot dead inside a police detention cell in Pasay City, half-Japanese Harra Kazuo is still seeking the elusive justice. Her partner, Jaypee Bertes, and his father, Renato, were among the first victims of Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal and bloody war on drugs that killed thousands of mostly poor Filipinos.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) had acknowledged that it killed more than 7,000 drug suspects in shootouts to defend undercover police anti-illegal drug operatives. They were either serving arrest or search warrants and conducting sting operations, popularly known as “buy-bust” operations.
But human rights advocates, and a former Supreme Court senior associate justice, Antonio Carpio, found irregularities in the police operations. Police procedures were not followed, and CCTVs were turned off to hide the “executions” known as “nanlaban”. Human rights advocates claimed there were more than 30,000 victims in Duterte’s war on drugs, mostly killed by gunmen on motorcycles, popularly known as “riding in tandem,” and those left in dark and remote alleys and vacant lots with their heads and bodies heavily bandaged by packaging tapes.
The figures were not taken from somewhere, but were based on an accomplishment report submitted by the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO). The evidence against Duterte and his police minions on the mass killings in the war on drugs was so overwhelming and compelling that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Duterte.
He is now in an ICC detention facility in The Hague after his dramatic arrest in March. His trial will begin next month. However, Harra is still waiting for the day of reckoning. She wanted the two Pasay City police officers who were responsible for the deaths of Jaypee and Renato to serve jail time.
Although they were charged in court and arrest warrants had been issued in 2017, they remained free and on the loose. Police said the two police officers could not be found. Before midnight of July 6, 2016, less than a week after Duterte was sworn into office as president, Jaypee was arrested in a raid at their residence in Pasay City.
The raiding team could not show a search or arrest warrant, only a suspicion that Jaypee was a drug peddler. No drugs were found, but the police took him to a police detention cell at the SDEU, the drug enforcement unit.
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Renato accompanied his son to make sure the police would not harm him. But, more than 12 hours later, by midafternoon of July 7, the father and son were killed in cold blood, shot in close range inside the SDEU cell. Police claimed Renato tried to grab the gun of a police officer, a standard line in police rubout.
At 11 am on the day the two men were killed, Harra who is heavy with her second child, was able to visit her partner who claimed they were tortured to admit their crime. Interviewed later by some radio stations, she protested the arrest and accused the police of beating her partner and his elderly father. She also protested that the arresting police officers also groped her two-year-old daughter, Angel, because they suspect the illegal drugs may have been hidden inside her diaper. She said she had threatened to file cases against the abusive police officers when Jaypee got out of detention.
It did not happen. At 3 pm, Jaypee and his father were shot dead by the police officers for allegedly grabbing a handgun inside the detention cell. An autopsy report, conducted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), showed the two men were tortured and had broken arms before they were killed. They could not have grabbed a police handgun. She filed criminal cases against the police officers who killed her partner, but nothing happened.
The Pasay City Police said the two police officers went into hiding and could not be located. In 2019, she saw one of them in a Pasay City street, but the police failed to arrest him. Five years later, she heard the police officer was arrested and detained for another crime. However, the cases against the police officers were archived in a regional court because the two could not be located. A week after the killing, the CHR took Harra under its witness protection program because of the serious threats on her life.
A month later, she testified in a Senate inquiry called by former Senator Leila de Lima. De Lima would later lose her Senate seat when she was accused of drug trade and detained for seven years in Camp Crame on trumped up charges. De Lima was released from detention after Duterte stepped down from power. Later, the courts dismissed her three drug cases.
In May 2025, De Lima was elected as a Party-list representative at the lower house of Congress. She too is seeking justice. In September 2016, while under CHR protection, she gave birth to a son, whom she named JP after her partner. The boy, who never saw his father, is now in his third grade. But justice remained elusive. In January, when the lower house’s QUAD committee held a public hearing, Harra failed to attend because of her health conditions.
Harra said she feared she would see the day the killers of her partner would be punished since she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But, she continues to hope Duterte gets convicted in The Hague, and the two police officers who pulled the trigger will be brought to justice.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of this publication.
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