Drug killings are murders — Aquino

Former President Benigno Simeon Aquino III INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

Former President Benigno Aquino III said there had been murders rather than extrajudicial killings in the ongoing war on drugs and those responsible must be must be caught and punished.

“If you say there is extrajudicial killings, then it means there is judicial killing. But I remember, we do not have the death penalty, so there is no judicial killing,” Aquino said.

“Therefore,” he said, “there is no extrajudicial killing… So clearly, there is murder, there is homicide taking place.”

Aquino spoke on Monday to reporters during the commemoration of the 34th death anniversary of his father, Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who was killed on his return from exile to lead the mounting opposition to dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Aquino said he had no evidence that the drug-related killings were state-sponsored but added that the “state has an obligation to protect all its citizens and go after all those who have committed infractions against society.”

“Someone was killed by someone else. Find the killer and impose the proper punishment,” Aquino said. “In the Constitution and in the Church that I belong to, one death is one too many.”

More than 7,000 people have been killed, including over 3,000 by the police, in President Duterte’s year-old war on drugs.

At least 80 people were killed in police operations last week in Metro Manila and in Bulacan in one of the deadliest episodes in this campaign.

The spike in the number of casualties, which included 17-year-old Grade 12 student Kian Loyd delos Santos in Caloocan City, ignited public outrage, even among some lawmakers allied to Mr. Duterte.

Aquino said he was shocked by the killing of Delos Santos and the deaths of children who had become “collateral damage” in the war on drugs.