MANILA — House Human Rights Committee Chair Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante said the committee will continue to invite former President Rodrigo Duterte and Senator Ronald Dela Rosa to its inquiry on the drug war.

Before the hearing ended Monday, Abante said in his closing remarks, “We will still be inviting the former president, we will still be inviting Sen. Dela Rosa in this hearing. We will be inviting them although we will not issue any show cause order on them but we are going to continue inviting them.”

Abante earlier said the investigation is seeking to determine whether human rights violations were committed in the drug war campaign and whether due process was observed. He gave assurances that the panel will not “witch hunt”, and allegations should be backed by evidence.

“We would like to emphasize that the House will approach this inquiry with the impartiality, objectivity, sensitivity, and empathy that such a profound responsibility demands, and as Chair of the House Committee on Human Rights, it is my duty and responsibility to ensure that this process is conducted with the utmost probity, fairness, and respect for all the parties involved,” Abante said.

“We'd like to find out, bakit maraming napatay? Bakit parang walang due process dito? ‘Yan ang hinahanap namin sa Committee on Human Rights,” he added.

Officials during the Duterte administration have admitted there were human rights violations in the conduct of the drug war of the previous government.

Then Justice Secretary and current Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said as much during the hearing of the House Human Rights Committee, while reiterating that the administration investigated cases of human rights violations through mechanisms such as those provided under Administrative Order No. 35, issued in 2012, that created the inter-agency committee on extra-legal killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other grace violations to the rights to life, liberty, and security of persons.

The committee’s mandate, according to the DOJ website, is “to serve as the government’s institutional machinery dedicated to the resolution of unsolved cases of political violence in the form of extra-legal killings (ELK), enforced disappearances (ED), torture and other grave violations of the right to life, liberty and security of persons.”

Guevarra added that allegations of violation should be studied case-to-case, saying that not all incidents where there were deaths should mean that was a violation of human rights. - with a report from Willard Cheng, ABS-CBN News