Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on Tuesday expressed its support for the investigation of government officials allegedly involved in the drug trade.
In a letter titled “Our Country and Our Faith” that touched on various issues, CBCP President Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said the probe of government officials involved in drugs “must spare none.”
“We are very disturbed by the possibility that high-ranking officials could have been involved in the drug-trade. The investigation must be thoroughgoing and must spare none,” Villegas wrote, without naming the said officials.
READ: CBCP airs concern on drug menace
President Rodrigo Duterte, in his so-called narcolists, had named local chief executives, policemen, judges and other personalities involved in drugs.
Duterte and his allies also tagged Sen. Leila De Lima in the proliferation of drugs at the national penitentiary and accused her of receiving money from drug lords to fund her campaign. The lady senator has vehemently denied the allegations.
Villegas reiterated the Church’s alarm over the mounting death toll in the Duterte administration’s war on drugs that claimed about 3,000 lives in the first three months, saying that reports of drug suspects shot dead for allegedly resisting arrest were “very disturbing and truly distressing.”
READ: Grieving Bishop Soc: Enough of killings; let our humanity speak
“There is no way that a government can credibly claim that it is waging a relentless war on drugs to preserve life – while in the process abetting, encouraging or fomenting the destruction of life thought – wrongly –to be unworthy!” Villegas said.
“The observations of international watchers and monitoring groups should not be cavalierly dismissed as statements of those who do not know the reality ‘on the ground.’ These are specialized agencies of an international stature, and when they warn that human rights are egregiously violated, their warnings ought to be heeded by any conscientious government,” he added.
The Lingayen-Dagupan archbishop said the campaign against drugs and upholding of human rights can go hand in hand and should not oppose the other.
“There can be no opposition between the campaign against drugs and the campaign for human rights. In fact, any opposition renders one or the other meaningless and fruitless. We seek the elimination of the drug trade and an end to the proliferation of habituating substances because they constitute a real threat to well-being. But we cannot be consistent in this resolve by denying some the right to their own well-being, fundamental to which is the right to life!” Villegas said. RAM