Those suspected of involvement in the illegal drug trade have become targets of a national war on drugs that Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte launched after assuming office June 30.
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PHILIPPINE POLICE CHIEF RONALD DELA ROSA, saying drug users should kill traffickers.
“Why are you Americans killing the black people there, shooting them down when they are already on the ground?”
In his visit in Bacolod City where he met several suspected drug users and pushers who surrendered, dela Rosa said they have all the right to be mad since drug lords are destroying their lives and raking in money from them.
Dela Rosa, together with Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano and other officials, had a dialogue with the owners of high-end clubs and bars in said areas.
President Duterte may have the best intentions in the world in waging his drug war, but as a lawyer he ought to know he must respect human rights and that he can not take legal shortcuts.
“I would say that we continue to engage with the government of the Philippines on our concerns privately, as well as from the podium, and raise those… Go ahead. Killing them is allowed because you are the victim”.
Mr Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill tens of thousands of suspected criminals in an unprecedented blitz that would eliminate illegal drugs in six months.
He promised on the campaign trial that 100,000 people would be killed and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them. Duterte said on Sunday, August 21, adding that those cases are “still human rights violations”.
According to Dela Rosa, the government was winning the war on drugs and that law enforcers should keep the momentum because “there is no stopping us”.
In an interview with GMA network’s anchor Kara David, Secretary Andanar explained that this is the reason why the President has restrained himself from showing the matrix in its entirety, until all the persons listed there have been confirmed to be involved in the country’s drug problem.
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“Duterte’s aggressive rhetoric advocating violent, extrajudicial solutions to crime in the Philippines has found willing takers”, the US-based group’s Asia deputy director, Phelim Kine, said in a statement.
