Marcos says ‘not one person died’
Manila seizes largest haul of meth in drug bust
MANILA, Philippines, April 16, (AP): Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said Tuesday police seized the largest haul of methamphetamine in the country in years without anybody being killed, in a subtle criticism of his predecessor’s notoriously deadly crackdown on illegal drugs.
Police seized nearly 1,630 kilograms (1.8 tons) of methamphetamine Monday from a van and arrested its driver at a checkpoint in Alitagtag town in Batangas province south of Manila. Intelligence operations were underway to arrest other suspects, officials said without elaborating.
Powerful
Locally known as shabu, the powerful stimulant had a street value of more than 13 billion pesos ($228 million), officials said.
“This is the biggest shipment of shabu that we’ve seized, but not one person died. No shots were fired and nobody was injured because we operated slowly,” Marcos told reporters in Alitagtag, where he presented the boxloads of seized drugs to the press.
“This should be the approach in the drug war for me and the most important objective is to stop the smuggling of illegal drugs into the Philippines,” Marcos said, adding that the newly seized drugs came from outside the country.
Marcos, who took office in mid2022, has vowed to continue the crackdown on illegal drugs launched by his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, but said it would be done differently and focus more on rehabilitating drug addicts.
Under Duterte, more than 6,000 mostly poor suspected drug dealers were killed in reported clashes with law enforcers. The widespread killings alarmed Western governments, including the United States, and sparked an ongoing International Criminal Court investigation as a possible crime against humanity.
Police say there have been considerably fewer killings of drug suspects under Marcos, but human rights groups have expressed alarm over the continued killings and asked Marcos to cooperate with the ICC in investigating the killings that took place when Duterte was president and a longtime mayor of southern Davao city.
As president, Duterte withdrew the
The Atlantic route from West Africa to the European Union territory is one of the most dangerous in the world. Boats that miss their destination can be swept away
Philippines from the ICC’s founding treaty in 2019 after the court launched a preliminary examination into thousands of killings under his anti-drugs crackdown.
Also: MANILA, Philippines:
The Philippine president said Monday his administration has no plan to give the United States access to more Philippine military bases and stressed that the American military’s presence in several camps and sites so far was sparked by
aggressive actions in the disputed
China’s
by Atlantic trade winds and currents from east to west, drifting for months. Migrants aboard often die of dehydration and malnutrition. Others have also been known
South China Sea.
President who took office in 2022, allowed American forces and weapons access to four additional Philippine military bases, bringing to nine the number of sites where troops can rotate indefinitely under a 2014 agreement.
The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of security alliances in the region to better counter China, a move that dovetails with Philippine efforts to shore up its external defense, especially in the South China Sea.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., U.S.
jump into the ocean out desperation. (AP)
❑ ❑ ❑ Pope sides with Peruvian villagers:
Pope Francis sided with a group of Peruvian villagers who have complained that companies linked to a powerful South American church group have tried to evict them from their land using lawsuits and obscure land titling schemes.
In a video recorded at his residence in the Vatican, the Pope sent a message of support to members of the San Juan Bautista de Catacaos farmers community in northern Peru, who have been fending off lawsuits from companies associated with the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae since 2014.
“I know what happened to you,” the Pope said in Spanish. “Defend your land and don’t let them steal it.”
The Sodalitium is a lay group that runs schools and spiritual retirement centers in several South American countries, but is also involved in real estate, agriculture and construction companies.
The conservative group was founded in Peru in 1971 and gained thousands of members in South America, where it also ran homes housing consecrated members.
But the Sodalitium has come under increased scrutiny in recent years after its founder and some of its main leaders were accused of committing abuses against children. (AP)