More murders in Philippine drug war — Rights group

MANILA: Shadowy assassins have killed scores of poor victims in the Philippines after President Rodrigo Duter te of f icial ly ordered police to withdraw from his deadly drug war, a rights monitor said yesterday.

Duterte pulled police from the crackdown on January 31 after a brutal seven-month campaign that left 2,555 drug suspects dead at the hands of law enforcers, with 3,930 other people murdered in unexplained circumstances.

The latest police tally given to AFP yesterday showed there were 4,076 “murder cases under investigation” on February 13.

This was 146 more than the end of January, which rights groups said showed extrajudicial killings had slowed but were nevertheless continuing in the drug war.

“The targets are still the same, as far as we are concerned: people linked to drugs and who live in poor neighbourhoods,” Wilnor Papa, campaign official for the Philippine branch of Amnesty International, told AFP.

Papa said unknown assailants were now ki l l ing between nine and 10 people daily. This compared with about 30 people a day being kil led by police and unknown assailants when officers were still leading the crackdown.

In one new shooting incident covered by an AFP photographer, police found four men shot dead inside a shanty in northern Manila before dawn on Thursday, in a scene very similar to those covered at the height of the drug war.

Witnesses said unknown suspects broke into the house and started shooting, whi le three other men were shot dead in separate incidents elsewhere in the same district that night, local police told AFP.

Duterte ordered all police at the end of January to stop prosecuting his drug war as he sought to cleanse the force of widespread corruption.

This came after anti- drug of f icers kidnapped a South Korean businessman then murdered him inside the national police headquarters as part of an extortion racket, according to an official investigation.

The targets are still the same, as far as we are concerned: people linked to drugs and who live in poor neighbourhoods. Wilnor Papa, Philippine branch of Amnesty International campaign official