Govt report confirms police violations in drug war
MANILA: An official government report has confirmed violations commited by the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the Duterte administration’s bloody and violent war on illegal drugs, particularly extra-judicial killings.
The violations are contained in a report by Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra who told the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in a video message that half of the police operations covered in a review “failed to follow standard protocols pertaining to co-ordination with other agencies and processing of the crime scene.”
More specifically, Guevarra said the violations occurred in cases in which the police claimed that the mostly poor drug suspects were armed and decided to shoot it out with the lawmen instead of surrendering. The police, Guevarra said, did not conduct a “full investigation of the weapons recovered” ater the operation.
He pointed out: “No verification of the ownership of the firearms was undertaken. No request for ballistic examination or paraffin test was pursued until its completion.”
He also assured the UNHRC that appropriate state agencies have been tackling the report and that a number of policemen had been recommended for prosecution.
But Edre Olalia, the head of the National Union of People’s Lawyers, called the Guevarra report as a “smokescreen” to blame lowly police officers while shieilding their superiors who were “principal enablers” of the extrajudicial killings.
Olalia insisted that it was President Duterte and other top officials who “goaded, tolerated, sanctioned, condoned and justified the extrajudicial killings.”
Justice Undersecretary Adrian Sugay immediately reacted, saying that the findings of the report were just preliminary as he assured that top government officials were not exempted from liabilties as to the questionable deaths of the drug suspects.
“We intend to come out with further findings and recommendations,” Sugay said, pointing out these included the filing of possible administrative and criminal charges not only against the lowly policemen but also officials involved.