MANILA, Philippines — Senator Leila de Lima has branded the Department of Justice (DOJ) inquiry into the government’s drug war as a “circuitous” and “cumbersome” exercise that is not comparable to a thorough investigation.
De Lima said in a statement on Wednesday that the move was merely the Duterte administration’s “last-ditch attempt” to potentially undermine the work of international bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which was critical of the bloody drug war.
The senator said she called for steps similar to what the DOJ is doing now in 2016: first, calling for an independent national inquiry to be formed during the Senate hearings on suspected extra-judicial killings, and second, inviting the UN Special Rapporteur for observations.
However, she said these were not acted upon by the government.
“My recommendation fell on deaf ears. Earlier, in September of that same year, I introduced a proposed Senate resolution urging the Duterte administration to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions to conduct a country visit. Again, my proposal got nowhere,” she said in a statement written from her detention cell in Camp Crame.
Aside from that, the senator — Duterte’s staunch critic even before he became President in 2016 — said that the focus of the study would be only about 5,600 deaths reported during official police operations and not other attacks blamed on law enforcement agencies.
“It does not cover the killings done by other State-inspired death squads, the vigilantes,” she added.
Recently, the UNHRC expressed alarm toward the “widespread” and “systematic” killings under the government’s drug war.
According to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, they found “serious human rights violations and extrajudicial killings resulted from key policies driving the so-called war on drugs and incitement to violence from the highest levels of government.”
After this, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra assured the UNHRC in an online conference that an inter-agency group is conducting a judicious review of the 5,655 cases of drug suspects killed during anti-illegal drug operations.
Guevarra said that the body would not only review the deaths but would also discuss the affected families while providing legal assistance for possible prosecution of state officers involved.
As of now, only one drug war killing case has been found to be the result of summary execution — that of teenager Kian delos Santos, after three police officers were found guilty of murder by the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court Branch 125 last November 2018.
Previously, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines also took note of the alleged “hasty” creation of the task force, calling it a mere “attempt to save face.”
Duterte’s administration has clashed in the past with human rights organizations and advocates like De Lima, a former Commission on Human Rights chairperson. They have criticized the administration for its supposed lackadaisical approach to human rights with the routine killings of those accused of involvement in the drug trade.
However, the President noted in one of his previous State of the Nation Addresses that his concern is human lives, not human rights, as government officials stress that such abuses were not committed during the implementation of the drug war. With reports from Jim Mendoza, trainee
TRANSCRIPT: President Duterte’s 3rd State of the Nation Address (Sona)
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