New PNP chief says Duterte won’t sponsor EJKs

MANILA, Philippines — “Will the President sponsor state killing?”

The answer is “no,” at least for Gen. Camilo Cascolan, the newly-installed chief of the Philippine National Police.

In his first press briefing at Camp Crame as PNP chief, Cascolan maintained that there is no proof that extrajudicial killings were perpetrated by the police, and even told critics to come to him to ask for investigation on such cases.

“First, if you have that notion, come to me, we will investigate. Number two, there is no such thing as EJK,” he said when asked about how he plans to address the public’s impression that state forces are behind the brutal killings in the Duterte administration’s drug war.

“Third is if there are really cases that you know, file a case, ‘di ba (right)?” he also said.

Cascolan noted that the drug trade is in fact a challenge of “survival” for anti-narcotics units of the PNP who are at the forefront of the centerpiece campaign of the Duterte government.

“It’s not only the criminals who are being killed here. There are a lot of PNP officers already who died, ‘yung mga iba bata pa (some of them were young), but they do their jobs because they are passionate enough to stop or rid this country of illegal drugs,” he added.

“There is no such proof when it comes to EJK because EJK is state-sponsored. Will the President sponsor state killing? No. Will all other people in the government do that? No. I don’t believe so. Let’s file cases if there are,” the PNP chief went on saying.

Data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency as of July 2020 showed a total of 5,810 drug suspects have died in 178,348 anti-illegal drug operations conducted since July 2016. Another 251,889 suspects have been arrested.

However, human rights groups have pegged the death toll in the anti-drug campaign to a much higher number.

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