‘Near impunity’ for drug war killings in the Philippines, UN says

The ‘drug war’ is a major policy of President Rodrigo Duterte and tens of thousands may have been killed.

Philippines
A Filipino relative of victims of drug-related killings at a mass inside a church in Quezon city, east of Manila, Philippines. The UN has said there is 'near impunity' in the drug war of President Rodrigo Duterte in which thousands have died [File: Francis R Malasig/EPA]

Tens of thousands of people in the Philippines may have been killed in the war on drugs since mid-2016, amid “near impunity” for police and incitement to violence by top officials, the United Nations said on Thursday.

The drugs crackdown, launched by President Rodrigo Duterte after winning his election on a platform of crushing crime, has been marked by police orders and high-level rhetoric that may have been interpreted as “permission to kill,” it said.

Police, who do not need search or arrest warrants to conduct house raids, systematically force suspects to make self-incriminating statements or risk facing lethal force, the UN human rights office said in a report.

There has been only one conviction, for the 2017 murder of Kian delos Santos, a 17-year-old Manila student, it said. Three police officers were convicted after CCTV footage led to public outrage, it said.

At least 73 children were killed in the drug war, the youngest being five months old, the report added.

“Despite credible allegations of widespread and systematic extrajudicial killings in the context of the campaign against illegal drugs, there has been near impunity for such violations,” the report said.

Victims of Duterte’s war on drugs find solace in Philippines church

Police say their actions in the anti-drug campaign have been lawful and that deaths occur in shootouts with dealers resisting arrest.

But in at least 25 cases of “drug war” raids, proof was found suggesting police were planting evidence. In some instances, guns allegedly used by slain suspects bore identical serial numbers.

“The pattern suggests planting of evidence by police officers and casts doubt on the self-defense narrative, implying that the victims were likely unarmed at the time of killing.”

The report said that some statements from the highest levels of government had “risen to the level of incitement to violence” and “vilification of dissent is being increasingly institutionalized”.

“The human rights situation in the Philippines is marked by an overarching focus on public order and national security, including countering terrorism and illegal drugs,” it said.

But this was “often at the expense of human rights, due process rights, the rule of law and accountability”.

Victims of Duterte’s war on drugs find solace in Philippines church

“The government has also increasingly filed criminal charges, including by using COVID-19 special powers laws, against social media users posting content critical of government policies and actions,” the report added.

The document will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council later in June.

In a statement sent to Al Jazeera, the Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines said the report was “a damning indictment” of the Duterte administration’s “non-compliance with principles, standards, instruments and conventions on human rights”.

Lawyers and activists raised the alarm this week over a new anti-terrorism bill pushed by Duterte, warning of draconian and arbitrary provisions that could be abused to target his detractors.

Drug-related killings

Most victims in the drug war are young, poor urban males, the UN report said. Their relatives described “numerous obstacles in documenting cases and pursuing justice”.

“The most conservative figure, based on Government data, suggests that since July 2016, 8,663 people have been killed – with other estimates of up to triple that number,” it said.

The UN cited reports of widespread drug-related killings perpetrated by unidentified “vigilantes” and a Philippine government report in 2017 that referred to 16,355 “homicide cases under investigations” as accomplishments in the drugs war.

Human rights groups said that the death toll in Duterte’s drug war could be at least 27,000.

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An undertaker removes the body of a suspected victim of the Philippines’ war on drugs from a street in Pasay city, south of Manila, in March 2019 [Francis R. Malasig/EPA]

A 2016 police circular launching the campaign uses the terms “negation” and “neutralisation” of “drug personalities,” it said, calling for its repeal.

“Such ill-defined and ominous language, coupled with repeated verbal encouragement by the highest level of State officials to use lethal force, may have emboldened police to treat the circular as permission to kill,” it said.

Government figures show that 223,780 “drug personalities” were arrested from mid-July 2016 until 2019, but unclear charges and irregularities in due process raise concerns that “many of these cases may amount to arbitrary detentions”.

At least 248 land and environmental rights activists, lawyers, journalists and trade unionists were killed between 2015 and 2019, the report said.

So-called red-tagging, or labelling people and groups as communists or terrorists, had become rife.

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies