Shoot drug dealers like in Philippines – Bung Moktar

KUALA LUMPUR: Kinabatangan member of parliament Datuk Seri Bung Moktar Radin proposed that the government follow the government of the Philippines which has resorted to the very stringent measure of shooting dead drug pushers who refused to cease their activities and surrender.

Bung Moktar also suggested that drug pushers be held without trial when debating the Home Ministry’s Budget 2018 allocation in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

He made the proposal as he claimed that the National Anti-Drug Agency (AADK) has failed in its task.

Bung Moktar said that the AADK should be abolished as it is a waste of time and resources.

“The AADK has failed in carrying out its responsibility. Every year, there is an increased number of drug addicts although drugs are the country’s’s number one enemy,” he said.

He added that it was time for the government to look for a permanent solution by emulating the Philippines, which he claimed is now “drug free’ since President Rodrigo Duterte took over office in July 2016.

“Why can’t we follow the Philippines? We could just detain the drug addicts without trial and shoot the drug dealers, so our country is free from them,” said Bung whose remark shocked the Opposition as several MPs got up and asked if he was being serious.

Bung Moktar added that the measure was necessary to ensure that issues surrounding drugs do not become an epidemic in the country.

Last year, Bung Moktar also made the same suggestion in Parliament, namely urging the government to act firmly by shooting drug addicts and traffickers to end the drug menace, described as the nation’s number one enemy.

However, Deputy Home Minister Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said the government has no plans to allow law enforcers to shoot drug traffickers in the effort to tackle the narcotic drug problem in the country.

He said any amendment to the law to allow that action to be taken in the country was opposed to international norms and policies.

“We don’t have to follow them (the Philippines) because it will bring a lot of implications and pressure from outside such as the United Nations,” he said.

He said the country might face implications such as economic sanctions from international organisations because the matter was seen as flouting human rights.

The Philippine Drug War has been criticised locally and internationally for its summary executions which have caused thousands of deaths due to the police operations.