Police killings raise fears over Duterte rule
manila — Philippine police shot dead eight drug suspects this week, authorities said on Friday, following repeated calls by presidentelect Rodrigo Duterte for security forces to kill criminals.
Gunmen on motorcycles also murdered three petty criminals in Duterte’s hometown of Davao, police said, deepening fears of mass extra-judicial killings once the controversial politician begins his sixyear term on June 30.
Police insisted the eight drug suspects were killed lawfully, with the officers only firing back after being shot at in three separate raids. One occurred in Manila, another near the capital and the third in a small town in the northern Philippines.
“There is no new policy to kill drug suspects. We have our rules of engagement and respect their human rights,” said Superintendent Teresita Escamillan, police spokeswoman for the Manila district where two of the suspects were killed.
When asked for comment, national police spokesman Wilben Mayor said all officers “appeared” to follow operational procedures on the use of force, based on the reports sent to headquarters in Manila.
Such deaths are not unusual in a nation where the police force has a track record of extra-judicial killings, and show the danger of the situation getting much worse under Duterte, according to rights group Amnesty International.
“We fear an erosion of the rule of law. Once that happens, the Philippines will become a Wild West and become totally ungovernable,” Wilnor Papa, campaign coordinator for Amnesty’s Philippine office, said.
Papa said there were other worrying signals of an imminent breakdown in the rule of law, citing the recent offer by the incoming mayor of the major city of Cebu of bounties to police officers who killed criminal suspects.
Extra-judicial killings by soldiers, police, insurgents and vigilante groups were already among the Philippines’ most significant human rights problems, the US State Department said in its human rights report last year. — AFP