ALTHOUGH she supports President Duterte’s war on drugs, neophyte Senator Leila de Lima demanded on Tuesday an end to the spate of killings in the country.
“I must admit, the public reaction to these executions is not in favor of those who oppose it. A 91% approval rating for the President and what he stands for is a formidable record. But we cannot base our reactions to these killings on the popularity of the President. Popular or not, MURDER MUST STOP. S-T-O-P. STOP. Stop the killings now!” De Lima said in her first privilege speech.
READ: Full text of Sen. Leila de Lima’s privilege speech on drugs, killings
“There might not be a manifest public outcry, but there is definitely a seething undercurrent of remonstration against the disregard for human life,” she said.
De Lima recognized that the government must wage war against drugs but she said it could not be done with blood.
“Yes, Mr. President, indeed, we must wage this war against drugs. But there must be another way. There has to be another way. There must be a way other than this method that brings us to our collective descent into impunity, fear, and ultimately, utter and complete inhumanity,” she said.
“We cannot wage the war against drugs with blood. We will only be trading drug addiction with another more malevolent kind of addiction. This is the compulsion for more killing, killings that have now included the innocent…”
“As a human rights advocate and human being, I plead to the government, this administration, and to the President. There must be another way. There has to be another way. We must find another way,” she said.
De Lima said she was not only concerned by the killings tallied by the Philippine National Police (PNP) as she expressed her “gravest” concern over the deaths allegedly perpetrated by the vigilante groups.
She then enumerated some of the killings allegedly carried out by vigilantes.
As for the killings carried out supposedly in pursuit of police work, De lima noted the usual explanation that the executions were done in the course of legitimate law enforcement operations.
“Nanlaban daw. Nakipagbarilan daw. Nang-agaw daw ng baril habang naka-posas. Pero alam naman natin na minsan ay style bulok na yang mga paliwanag na yan,” she said.
“We are aware of incidents of police rub-outs. We know about the shortcuts taken by some law enforcers in the guise of self-defense. The use of force, it appears in some cases, may not be necessary, or, if necessary, was not proportional.”
“We still have a system of law that processes and punishes wrongdoers. We have our Bill of Rights that accord the right to be presumed innocent. What is worrisome in this situation is that the war on drugs is becoming a convenient pretext for misguided or utterly corrupt law enforcers to kill just any one,” said the senator.
De Lima said if the administration was sincerely concerned about the spate of killings, then she said it should welcome an investigation by the Senate committee on justice, which she chairs.
“We must call for the accountability of state actors responsible for this terrifying trend in law enforcement, and the investigation of killings perpetrated by the vigilante assassins,” she added.
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