Palace: Drug war death toll to rise if suspects violently resist

MANILA, Philippines – The death toll in the government’s brutal campaign against illegal drugs will continue to rise if Filipinos will violently resist arrest during drug operations, Malacañang said Wednesday.

Government data from July 1, 2016 until November 30 this year showed that 5,050 people were killed in drug operations after allegedly resisting arrest.

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said “the number of deaths occurring in drug-related cases would depend on the circumstances surrounding the arrest” during buy-bust operations.

For Panelo, the official death toll in the drug war showed that many Filipinos continue to resist arrest during operations. But he also downplayed the number, saying the figures were “way behind the 30,000 that is being spread by some false new agencies.”

“It means that the people involved there are resisting arrest or using violence. That’s why in the process they are given the consequent violence coming from the police officers,” he said.

The Palace official said he had been reading news reports and said he was “surprised” that “there have been many buy-bust operations all over the country.”

“I have been saying that most of the drug-related cases of so-called extrajudicial killings are coming from the members of the syndicates themselves,” he said.

“So there is a need that the fight against drugs should be unrelenting,” he added.

Panelo said the death toll would continue to rise if drug suspects in operations resist with violence.

“It depends on how those involved in drugs will respond to operations against them. [If] they become violent, necessarily, the result would be violent too. What you sow, you reap,” he said. /kga