PNP chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar. Image from PNP
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine National Police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar maintained on Tuesday that domestic remedies were working in the country for those pushing for an investigation of the government’s war against illegal drugs.
“Each one of us has a right to bring our complaints to where we think these would be addressed. So we respect the decision of the families of persons killed in anti-illegal drug operations in seeking an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation,” Eleazar said in a statement.
“But we can assure them that the Philippine justice system works. Proof of this is the conviction of the policemen for the killing of Kian delos Santos and several other court decisions which have caused the dismissal and imprisonment of other PNP personnel,” he added.
Eleazar was reacting to an ICC report that said 94 percent of the drug war victims wanted the ICC to look into the government’s alleged crimes against humanity in its war on drugs.
The PNP chief said they had been cooperating with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in its probe of the drug war killings. The DOJ said it finished last month its review of 52 cases of anti-illegal drug police operations. But both Eleazar and DOJ chief Menardo Guevarra had pointed fingers at each other over whom to release the findings to.
“We already made several initiatives to prove that the PNP has no policy of allowing and tolerating all forms of human rights abuses in the conduct of our operations,” Eleazar said. INQ