MANILA, Philippines — Interior and Local Government Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said on Sunday that the data released by the Ateneo School of Government about the drug war deaths prove that the opposition’s claim is “very inaccurate.”
According to the Drug Archive released by the Ateneo last Friday, more than 7,000 drug suspects have been shot dead during the course of the Duterte administration’s three-year war on drugs.
READ: Academe-led database: Over 7,000 suspects killed in 3-year drug war
This, according to Densing, made the claims of the opposition — that there were more than 15,000 victims of the drug war — to be false.
“It’s inconsistent with the numbers being provided by the opposition, they’ve been always saying that those killed in the drug war is between 15,000 to 20,000,” Densing said in an interview.
“So sinasabi lang natin dito na even from the very beginning that those numbers are very, very, very inaccurate,” he added.
Densing also noted that the number released by Ateneo was “more near to reality” to the numbers that the government has.
He then said that despite the different numbers released, these data would not mislead the public on the actual numbers of victims of the drug war as long as the data was provided by the government.
“As long as these are based on actual numbers provided by the government, specifically by the Philippine National Police, they should not be speculating on the numbers because speculating numbers creates chaos among the perspective of our country,” he said.
“Unlike yung mga opposition natin, [they] are really making numbers that are really exaggerated, 15 to 20,000 napatay. Eh ‘yung 15 to 20,000 napatay every year eh ano na yan, kasama na diyan yung oridinaryong murder, homicide, which are not necessarily related to illegal drug operations,” he added.
Based on the data by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Authority, almost 5,000 have been killed in anti-drug operations launched by government authorities since July 2016 up to October 2018. /je
READ: PDEA: Almost 5,000 killed in Duterte’s war on drugs as of Oct. 2018