Amnesty raps Philippines’ ‘extrajudicial killings’
A London-based international rights group has strongly criticized the Philippines for the killing of thousands of drug dealers under President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial anti-drug campaign.
Amnesty International said on Wednesday that after investigating the conditions under which 59 people had been killed in the campaign and interviewing 110 witnesses, relatives of slain suspects, drug users, police officers, and even hired killers from November to December last year, it came to believe that “the vast majority of these killings appear to have been extrajudicial executions.”
The rights group said the killings may constitute crimes against humanity.
Amnesty is “deeply concerned that the deliberate and widespread killings of alleged drug offenders, which appear to be systematic, planned and organized by the authorities, may constitute crimes against humanity,” the rights group said.
The human rights group urged Duterte’s government to adopt an approach that respects human rights in its fight against drugs and crime, and called on the police and judiciary to ensure accountability and prosecute officers involved in unlawful killings.
On Monday, National police chief Ronald Dela Rosa said the force under his watch would be stopping all anti-drug raids to start focusing on taking out rogue officers.
The decision came after a group of such officers killed a South Korean businessman for money. The widely publicized scandal prompted Dela Rosa to form a counter-intelligence force to cleanse the 170,000-strong police force of rogue and corrupt officers.
Since Duterte took office in June, about 2,000 drug suspects have been killed in security operations, while nearly 4,000 others have died in unexplained circumstances linked to the crackdown, according to police figures cited by media.
At least 35 policemen and three soldiers have also been killed by the drug dealers during the raids, police say.
Duterte himself has described police as “corrupt to the core.”
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