De Lima dubs Duterte’s drug war as ‘monstrous killing machine’

MANILA, Philippines — A “monstrous killing machine.”

This was how Senator Leila De Lima described President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against drugs after Amnesty International (AI) released a report slamming the administration for its lack of “meaningful accountability” in the drug war which resulted in the death of thousands of drug suspects. 

“While AI has called Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ a ‘large-scale murdering enterprise’, I labeled it as a monstrous ‘killing machine’ whose continued rampage with almost no accountability within the national system requires the focus and concrete actions from such global instruments of justice as the UNHRC (UN Human Rights Council) and the ICC (International Criminal Court),” De Lima said in a statement. 

The senator added that the government is in a “clear breach of its duty under international law” for its failure to investigate the alleged extra-judicial killings (EJK) linked to the campaign against drugs. 

“The lack of any serious domestic investigation makes the Philippine government in a clear breach of its duty under international law to investigate EJKs, an obligation traceable to the general duty of a state to respect and guarantee human rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),” De Lima said. 

Due to this, De Lima said a UN-led probe is “paramount” as she expressed her support towards the call for a probe of the alleged EJKs in the country.

“As before, AI joins the chorus of calls from all over urging the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to probe the killings here. I wholeheartedly support it,” De Lima said. 

“A UNHRC-led commission of inquiry has become paramount, both as a measure of justice to the Filipino people whose access to local legal remedies is practically nil, and as a tool of necessity to prove that resort to UN mechanisms and processes remains viable for our people, given the Philippines’ pullout from the ICC,” the senator noted. 

‘Politicizing’ the EJK

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo on Monday downplayed the AI report, saying that group was only “politicizing” the alleged cases of EJK in the country. 

READ: Amnesty International ‘politicizing’ so-called EJK in PH — Palace

De Lima, however, said that cases of EJKs are still being reported “with near zero accountability within our domestic system.”

“No matter how Duterte’s mouthpiece spin it by calling the latest Amnesty International (AI) report as an act of ‘politicizing’ EJKs and an alleged undue interference into the domestic affairs of the country, and despite the PNP Chief’s blanket remark that the international NGO’s findings are ‘stereotype’ allegations unworthy of belief, no apologist of Duterte’s ‘drug war’ killings can conceal the inescapable truth: EJKs continue unabated with near zero accountability within our domestic system,” De Lima said.

“Thus, triggering a growing global clamor for international intergovernmental bodies, such as the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), to independently investigate the killings and other human rights violations in the country that can lead to the prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators and the masterminds behind the atrocities,” the senator added. (Editor: Julie Espinosa)