Almost 6,000 suspects killed in war on drugs, says PH drug enforcement agency

Government agents arrest suspects in a drug bust in Cabanatuan City. Photo: PDEA/FB
Government agents arrest suspects in a drug bust in Cabanatuan City. Photo: PDEA/FB

As of September this year, 5,903 suspects have been killed in the name of the Duterte administration’s bloody drug war, government data released today showed.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency said 47 suspects were killed in August and September this year, which raised the total body count to the current number. The agency added that 896 government workers were arrested for drug-related offenses in those same months, 438 of whom are employees, 356 are elected officials, and 102 uniformed personnel.

Read: ‘Shock and awe definitely didn’t work’: Top drug cop has change of heart about Duterte’s drug war

From July 1, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2020, the government has conducted 178,616 anti-illegal drugs operations, which led to the arrest of 259,296 suspects.  Out of this number, 10,488 were considered “high-value” suspects, including 283 foreigners. As many as 3,354 people under the age of 18 were rescued from these operations.

A total of  632 illegal drug dens were destroyed, while authorities have seized a total of PHP44.22 billion (US$915.6 million) worth of methamphetamine.

The report comes shortly after an alleged extrajudicial killing survivor named Vincent Adia was shot to death at an Angono hospital where he received treatment for his wounds. According to a hospital worker who treated him, before he was killed, Adia wrote down the name of the person who shot him three times on the head, but “the papers he wrote on suddenly went missing.”

The Philippine National Police has been waging a bloody drug war since 2016, which has killed thousands of drug suspects. The police said they were killed in raids because they fought back (“nanlaban”). Still, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in June that cops habitually plant guns on drug suspects’ bodies, as well as methamphetamine. In one example, the organization found that “that the police repeatedly recovered guns bearing the same serial numbers from different victims in different locations.”

Meanwhile, a report released by the International Criminal Court in December 2019 said that suspects had been tortured, people were forced to watch their loved ones die, and police officers were raping women as part of the drug campaign. The court is currently conducting a “preliminary examination” into Duterte’s drug war; the government had said that the court’s investigators would either be blocked from entering the country or be deported.

Police chief General Camilo Cascolan has denied that extrajudicial killings exist in the Philippines.



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