Philippine Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque has assailed the validity of a study conducted by the country’s top universities which shows that majority of those killed by the government’s drug war are male and poor.
In an interview today with radio station DZMM, Roque said in a mix of Filipino and English, “I don’t question if those killed are poor. My question is, are they sure that those victims were killed because of the drug war? That’s what the study does not question.”
Conducted by the Ateneo School of Government, De La Salle University, University of the Philippines Diliman, and the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, the study that was released yesterday used information reported by various media organizations. The study covered the alleged 5,021 killings that happened from May 10, 2016 to September 29, 2017.
“What experts should have done, was to analyze if each [victim was killed due to the drug war]. Because that’s what we are doing now in [the government] which we are having a hard time to finish. We are studying if everyone who died were killed because of the war on drugs or because of other reasons,” said Roque.
Roque added the study does not add value if its data was all based on secondary sources.
“What I am expecting from experts if for them to use primary figures (sic) that were verified so that we can rely on [the validity] of the conclusion. But if they used the information from the media, we know that the media also gets their information from another source. They don’t get the information from the primary source, which makes the number [of victims] questionable.”
The study shows that 223 of the victims worked in manual labor, while 38 victims were unemployed. Most of the killings allegedly happened in Manila, Quezon City, and Caloocan.
Yet Roque somewhat begrudgingly accepts that most of the victims are poor. He said: “The war on drugs is primarily against shabu [methamphetamine]. We know the president [Rodrigo Duterte] keeps saying those who use shabu are the poor. It’s a poor man’s drug. The reality of the drug war is that when people are killed, it happens in those places which are not rich [neighborhoods].”
According to Human Rights Watch, over 12,000 urban poor Filipinos have been killed by the drug war since Duterte took office in 2016. The report stated that over 2,555 of the killings have been linked to the Philippine National Police (PNP).
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