Militants urge Duterte to end his war on drugs

Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes. NOY MORCOSO/INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

Leftist groups called on President Duterte on Monday to end his war on drugs, saying the campaign has only emboldened corrupt policemen to commit crimes.

Mr. Duterte ordered the campaign suspended on Monday after a series of scandals, including the kidnapping for ransom and murder of a South Korean businessman.

But he said the campaign would resume and continue up to his last day in office.

‘Untenable’

Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said the President’s intention to see through the war on drugs until the end of his six-year term was “untenable given the corruption in the police institution.”

“The drug war is now being used as cover for other criminal activities such as extortion, kidnapping for ransom and murder. How can a corrupt and fascist police force … successfully stamp out criminal activities?” Reyes said.

Mr. Duterte’s admission that about 40 percent of the police force are corrupt should have been enough to “discontinue and reevaluate” the government’s approach to the drug problem, Reyes said.

Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said the “gross rights violations inflicted, especially on the poor, and the trail of blood that [the war on drugs] has left should stop now.”

She said the the climate of impunity worsened among law enforcers, who took advantage of the President’s all-out antinarcotics campaign as a smokescreen for their criminal activities and attacks on organized communities.

Reyes and Palabay said the Duterte administration should instead implement comprehensive, socioeconomic reforms to deal with the roots of the proliferation of drugs, including reforms to nip corruption at law enforcement agencies.

Another rights watchdog lambasted the Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa, for his statement that the controversial antinarcotics operations would be suspended to make way for a cleansing of the ranks.

‘PR gesture’

Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia, Phelim Kine, called the statement an “empty public relations gesture,” because the PNP still would not go after the killers of the 7,000 people who had perished in the war on drugs.

“Dela Rosa’s announcement is a cynical triumph of form over substance because it reaffirms that he has no interest in a meaningful probe into the circumstances of the police killings of 2,546 suspected drug users and drug dealers since July 1,” Kine said.

He said Dela Rosa had willfully turned a blind eye to the deaths of 3,603 people who were killed by unidentified gunmen suspected to be policemen.

Dela Rosa’s “willful blind eye to those deaths constitutes a disgraceful betrayal of the public trust and is a telling indicator of his personal contempt for rule of law and the right to life of his fellow citizens,” Kine said.