De Lima wants admin to correct ‘Double Barrel’ flaws

Senator Leila de Lima. AP FILE PHOTO

Sen. Leila de Lima on Tuesday called on the administration to immediately address the “blatant defects” in the implementation of the “Double Barrel Project” and put a stop to the unabated spate of extrajudicial killings and summary executions in the country.

“Double Barrel Project” refers to the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) simultaneous operations against big-time drug lords and street-level drug pushers.

De Lima said the defects of the “Double Barrel Project” should be corrected “to avoid further violations of the constitutionally-protected human rights against taking of life, transgression of due process and the presumption of innocence of criminal suspects.”

“The rash of extrajudicial and summary killings has become a serious concern not only domestically but also internationally. We cannot claim success in the government’s war against drugs if there are innocent individuals who are being summarily killed or those apprehended were not accorded due process of the law,” she said in a statement.

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The senator then urged the government to heed the eight-point recommendations contained in the “Alternate Report” submitted by the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) to the United Nations Human Rights Council for its 3rd Cycle of 27th Session.

“The government should take heed of these recommendations after its so-called ‘war on drugs’ has been assessed and evaluated to have failed in addressing extrajudicial and summary killings in the country,” she said.

In its report released last Oct. 14, De Lima said, the AHRC noted that the administration failed in addressing extrajudicial and summary killings because it was more concerned on “winning the war on drugs, rather than investigating and preventing these killings.”

The report also noted several defects in the implementation of the “Double Barrel Project” which as of last Sept. 15 has claimed the lives of 986 since June 30, including innocent individuals and children, treated as “collateral damage” in the anti-drive campaign.

But De Lima said recent official figures showed that as of last Oct. 10, about 3,844 people have died since the government’s war against drugs was launched last July 1 — 1,550 died in police operations while 2,294 in extrajudicial or vigilante-style killings.

The senator  earlier filed Senate Bill No. 1197 that seeks to define extrajudicial killings and imposes penalties of life imprisonment without parole for any public officer, person in authority, agency of a person in authority or private individual who would be found guilty of extrajudicial killing. CDG/rga

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