Drug war killings still a major concern: Report

MANILA: Extra judicial killings that have resulted from the Duterte administration’s bloody war on illegal drugs remains a major human rights concern in the Philippines, according to a just-released report of the US State Department.

“Extra judicial killings have been the chief human rights concern for many years and after a sharp rise with the onset of the anti-drug campaign in 2016, they continued in 2017,” said the 2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released by the US State Deparment in Washington on Friday (Saturday in Manila) Aside from the bloody war on the drugs, the report said other “most signiicant” rights issues besetting the Philippines included life-threatening prison conditions, warrantless arrests, the government’s alleged “disregard” for due process, violence against the free press and human rights activists and forced labour.

But speciically, the report appeared to concentrate on extra-judicial killings or summary executions on the antidrug campaign earlier denounced by local and foreign rights activists with the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the lead role.

Duterte appeared to have given the police the “license to kill” in which most of the victims slain were “poor” drug suspects in various raids not only in Metro Manila but also throughout the country, the report pointed out.

It noted: “Some civil society organisations accused police of planting evidence, tampering with crime scenes, unlawfully disposing of the bodies of drug suspects and other actions to cover extra-judicial killings.”

“The government investigated,” the report pointed out, “a limited number of reported human rights abuses including abuses by its own forces, paramilitaries and insurgent and terrorist groups. Concerns cited police impunity increased signiicantly following the sharp increase in police killings.”

Police have repeatedly denied such allegations as they pointed out that those killed were armed and decided to ight it out with the lawmen with them instead of surrendering.

The release of the US report followed a sharp Malacanang Palace rejoinder accusing the European Union Parliament of interfering in purely internal Philippine affairs and “rehashing baseless’ claims against Duterte’s war on drugs.