PHILIPPINE POLICE RESUME WAR ON DRUGS, KILLING DOZENS
>> MANILA: Nearly 50 people suspected of using and selling drugs were killed by officers in the past two months, the Philippine National Police said on Friday, contradicting earlier pronouncements that the government’s war on drugs would become less deadly.
The figure was the first released since President Rodrigo Duterte reactivated the police in December as the country’s lead agency in carrying out a no-holds-barred crackdown on illegal narcotics.
Between Dec 5, 2017 — when the police took part in the Double Barrels Reloaded operation — and Thursday, officers conducted 3,253 raids, leading to the arrests of a number of “high-value targets” and the deaths of 46, the police said in a statement.
Mr Duterte temporarily placed the Drug Enforcement Agency in charge of the drug war last year after police officers were found to have killed three teenagers and then lied about how the boys died. News of their deaths prompted protests and a Senate investigation.
The exact number of people killed since Mr Duterte’s drug war took effect in 2017 is unknown. The government says fewer than 4,000 suspects have been killed, but Human Rights Watch last week estimated the figure at more than 12,000.
The police do not count among the dead the hundreds of victims killed nightly in attacks the government attributes to vigilante groups. Those victims are often found with cardboard signs around their necks indicating that they were drug users or dealers.
The government has strenuously rejected the death toll as estimated by Human Rights Watch, and has demanded the organisation issue an apology. A representative of Human Rights Watch defended its estimate.