Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chief Isidro Lapeña on Wednesday defended the actions of the Duterte administration ahead of a US congressional body hearing on the human rights consequences of the Philippines’ war on drugs.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bi-partisan caucus in the US House of Representatives, has invited resource persons to analyze the implementation of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs and reported extrajudicial killings related to the campaign.
Among those invited are I-Defend Philippines Spokesperson Ellecer Carlos, Amnesty International Senior Crisis Advisor Matthew Wells, and Human Rights Watch Asia Division Deputy Director Phelim Kine.
The commission said “reports of extrajudicial killings raise questions about how the United States should balance its concerns for protecting human rights and the rule of law with its desire to maintain the bilateral alliance and continue to pursue other shared goals.”
The US, a long-standing Philippine ally, has been keeping a sharp eye on Duterte’s drug war, with some American senators proposing to restrict US arms exports to the Philippines because of the reported abuses.
Speaking to the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), Lapeña said there has been a significant increase in the number of drug personalities arrested.
PDEA operations have neutralized 86,984 drug suspects, including alleged bigtime suppliers like Meko Tan, Lovely Impal and former Maguing, Lanao del Norte Mayor Johaira Macabuat.
Lapeña said the arrests “made a big dent” on the drug industry, as evident in how several shabu laboratories were recently abandoned.
“The Shabu (meth) labs that have been discovered and dismantled recently have been abandoned. This means that those who were previously manufacturing shabu in the Philippines… they have stopped producing in the country,” he said.
Under the government’s war on drugs, the PDEA conducted 64,397 operations that seized PHP18.52 billion (US$370.4 million) worth of narcotics in the past year.
This is almost thrice the amount confiscated in the previous year, Lapeña said.
The PDEA chief said the first year of crackdown on narcotics under President Rodrigo Duterte has instilled fear in the country’s once powerful drug syndicates.
“We have a courageous President and he’s taking the lead. We now have the situation that the government is calling the shot(s). It’s not the drug syndicates calling the shot(s).
Before, drug syndicates were the ones who did the intimidation. But now, they should be afraid because they are violating the law,” he said.
Rights monitors however have raised concern on the deaths of thousands of drug suspects in the government’s campaign.
Official data from the Philippine National Police pegged the total number of homicide cases at 9,432 from July 2016 to March 2017.
Of this number, 1,847 deaths were said to be drug-related, while 1,894 were not. The remaining 5,691 cases, approximately 60 percent of the total figure, were still under investigation.
Lapeña maintained that the government’s drug efforts were “done by the law.”
The PDEA chief also offered to bare government records to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which is set to analyze the implementation of Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
“We do not tolerate violations of human rights. Our records will show na ganyan, even sa Philippine National Police. We can show them our records,” he said.
Re-published from ABS-CBN News with edits
Reader Interactions