Alvarez slams AI report: Why are they interfering in PH drug war?

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez on Wednesday slammed the Amnesty International report for meddling in the country’s affairs.

Alvarez made the statement in a press conference about Amnesty’s report finding the police as behind the spate of vigilante killings by paying hired assassins to kill suspected drug criminals.

“Bakit ba sila nakikialam sa atin? Hindi naman sila yung may problema, tayo ang may problema. Bakit sila nakikialam sa atin?” Alvarez said in a press conference at the House of Representatives.

(Why are they meddling in our affairs? They are not the ones beset with the problem, we are. Why are they interfering?)

Alvarez said the international human rights watchdog should not be meddling in the country’s affairs because the Philippines is a sovereign nation.

“We are a sovereign country. They are not the ones suffering because of all these crimes. Huwag sila makialam, kasi tayo yung apektado, hindi naman sila (They should not interfere, because it is us who are affected, not them). They are far away from us,” he added.

According to the report, the police incited by President Rodrigo Duterte “systematically” targeted the poor by hiring assassins to kill drug pushers, planted evidence in the crime scene, stole from the victims, and fabricated incident reports, all in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs.

READ: AI: ‘Very top of government’ responsible for killings in PH 

The report also said the responsibility lies “at the very top of the government.”

The report said the police “systematically targeted mostly poor and defenseless people across the country while planting ‘evidence,’ recruiting paid killers, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports.”

“Incited by the rhetoric of President Rodrigo Duterte, the police, killers on their payroll, and unknown armed persons have slain more than a thousand people a month under the guise of a national campaign to eradicate drugs,” Amnesty International said in its report.

READ: Duterte gov’t ordered, paid killers in war on drugs — AI 

“This is not a war on drugs, but a war on the poor. Often on the flimsiest of evidence, people accused of using or selling drugs are being killed for cash in an economy of murder,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director has said.

The administration’s brutal war on drugs has left over 4,500 people killed vigilante style, while another 2,500 alleged drug offenders were killed by the police allegedly for resisting arrest. RAM

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