HRW: Coordination with PDEA no guarantee vs police abuse

With cops back in the drug war, it is unlikely that the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency can stop police abuses despite its lead role in the anti-narcotics campaign, a rights group said.

Responding to what the Palace calls “public clamor,” President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday tapped the police to provide “active support” to PDEA’s anti-drug activities. The decision comes close to two months since he barred the Philippine National Police from drug operations after the deaths of teenage suspects in police operations.

Because of the order announced Tuesday, the police can now join anti-drug raids but have to coordinate their actions with the PDEA.

In a statement, New York-based Human Rights Watch said although police are required to first consult with the PDEA, the agency would be unable to curb violations committed by cops noting the government’s “failure to hold anyone accountable.”

“The source of that alleged ‘clamor’ was unlikely to be Manila’s urban poor areas, the epicenter of the killing zones linked to the ‘drug war,’” said Phelim Kine, deputy director for HRW’s Asia Division.

“This effective ‘war on the poor’ may constitute crimes against humanity,” he added.

Duterte has spurred international alarm over the bloody anti-drug campaign, which was a campaign promise and a hallmark of his three-decade political career.

Human rights watchdogs said most of the fatalities in the crackdown have been extrajudicial killings committed by cops—an allegation that the government has vehemently and repeatedly denied by insisting that police were only killing in self-defense.

Kine said Duterte might have been “emboldened” by Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa’s strong criticism of the suspension of police anti-drug activities, as well as the lack of pressure from Southeast Asian countries and the US.

Dela Rosa had claimed that crimes like rape had gone up since the PNP had been benched in the drug war.

But PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino said Dela Rosa has no one else to blame if there is a rise in rape-slay cases as it falls within PNP’s anti-criminality responsibilities.

“It is their responsibility. Let us be clear that anti-criminality is their job, it is not ours. If there was an increase in the supply and demand on illegal drugs, that’s our problem, but if there was an increase in crime like rape, it is not our problem,” Aquino said in late November.

HRW said the police’s return to drug-clearing operations as “wholly unexpected.”

“Those failures highlight the need for United Nations action to investigate these killings, and to end the murderous police operations on urban poor communities,” Kine remarked.

HRW earlier warned that the looming comeback of the PNP to the frontline of war on drugs could mean “more bloodshed.”

The tactical shift in Duterte’s drug war came at a difficult time in his leadership.

Filipinos have mostly backed Duterte’s bloody campaign, but the hugely popular president’s satisfaction rating suffered from its sharpest dip since he took power following the killing of three minors in the hands of rogue officers in the country’s capital.

Early this year, Duterte was forced to suspend Oplan Tokhang—a portmanteau of two words meaning to “knock” and “plead”—on the heels of the kidnapping and killing of a South Korean businessman on the grounds of the PNP headquarters

Citing lack of manpower, the firebrand leader later reactivated police anti-drug activities.

 

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