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Talumpati Tungkol Sa War On Drugs

Ang isyu tungkol sa war on drugs ay isang pambansang suliranin na dapat pagtuunan ng pansin ng mga kinauukulan at ng madlang bayan.

Karamihan sa mga nangyayaring krimen sa lipunan ay mayroong kinalaman sa ipinagbabawal na gamot. Mula sa simpling pagnanakaw hanggang sa mga karumal-dumal na krimen, kadalasan ay droga ang pinag-uugatan.

Ang mga nasasangkot na mga suspek at biktima ay pabata ng pabata, at ang pinakamasaklap dito ay ang mga inosenteng tao na nadadamay at namamatay sa mga engkwentrong nagaganap.

Hindi lingid sa kaalaman ng lahat na ang kasalukuyang pamahalaan ay napaka- agresibo sa pagsugpo sa mga taong nasasangkot sa iligal na droga. Bilang patunay dito ay ang marami at tumataas pa na bilang ng mga sibilyan at pulis na mamatay dahil sa war on drugs.

Nakakalungkot at nakakatakot na isipin na sa kabila ng lahat ng pagpupursige ng pamahalaan ay talamak pa rin ang kalakalan ng iligal na droga.

Sadyang mahirap putulin ang ugat ng suliranin sa iligal droga dahil ang karamihan sa mga sangkot dito ay nasa loob mismo ng burukrasya. Ang mga taong inaasahang tagapagpatupad ng batas ay sila rin mismong lumalabag nito.

Malaki ang halaga ng pera na nakataya sa kalakalan ng droga. Ito ang pangunahing dahilan kung bakit marami ang nakakalimot sa kanilang mga sinumpaang tungkulin sa bayan.

Ang war on drugs ay hindi kayang isakatuparan ng mga iilan sa hanay ng pamahalaan. Ang pakikipagtulungan ng mga sibilyan ay napakahalaga upang ang suliraning ito ay maibsan kahit konti.

Ang pagsuplong at hindi pagkunsinti sa mga taong mayroong kinalaman tungkol sa iligal na droga ay napakalaking tulong na sa bayan.

Alalahanin ninyo, na ang mga lango sa droga ay walang pinipiling biktima.

Lahat ay puwedeng maging biktima ng krimen na bunga sa pagbatak ng droga. Ang lahat ay mayroong obligasyong tumulong at makialam sa kampanya ng pamahalaan sa War on Drugs.

Mga Karagdagang Talumpati

• Talumpati Tungkol Sa Pag-ibig
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Philippines’ War on Drugs: Its Implications to Human Rights in Social Work Practice

• Published: 03 September 2018
• Volume 3 , pages 138–148, ( 2018 )

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• Gil Espenido   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2846-8364 1  

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Since President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s ascension to the presidency in July 2016, he weaves and pursues his own brand of authoritarianism. Riding on his popularity, he raises the issue of illegal drugs as a question of national survival for the nation. With this obsession, Duterte has unleashed the entire police force with the state’s resources on his war on drugs. In more than a year of its implementation, the war on drugs has created havoc in the lives of the Filipino people. Furthermore, it has promoted a culture of impunity, and fear has gripped the nation. With the worsening human rights situation, human rights in social work practice in the Philippines grapples with the multi-faceted effects of the war on drugs. Given the specificity of needs and circumstances of the violations, the social work profession can and should respond to the unfolding challenges through various interventions at the individual, family, and community levels.

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Espenido, G. Philippines’ War on Drugs: Its Implications to Human Rights in Social Work Practice. J. Hum. Rights Soc. Work 3 , 138–148 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-018-0071-6

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The human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, vanda felbab-brown vanda felbab-brown director - initiative on nonstate armed actors , co-director - africa security initiative , senior fellow - foreign policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology @vfelbabbrown.

August 8, 2017

• 18 min read

On August 2, 2017, Vanda Felbab-Brown submitted a statement for the record for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines. Read her full statement below.

I am a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.  However, as an independent think tank, the Brookings Institution does not take institutional positions on any issue.  Therefore, my testimony represents my personal views and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars, employees, officers, and/or trustees.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines is morally and legally unjustifiable. Resulting in egregious and large-scale violations of human rights, it amounts to state-sanctioned murder. It is also counterproductive for countering the threats and harms that the illegal drug trade and use pose to society — exacerbating both problems while profoundly shredding the social fabric and rule of law in the Philippines. The United States and the international community must condemn and sanction the government of the Philippines for its conduct of the war on drugs.

THE SLAUGHTER SO FAR

On September 2, 2016 after a bomb went off in Davao where Duterte had been  mayor for 22 years, the Philippine president declared a “state of lawlessness” 1 in the country. That is indeed what he unleashed in the name of fighting crime and drugs since he became the country’s president on June 30, 2016. With his explicit calls for police to kill drug users and dealers 2 and the vigilante purges Duterte ordered of neighborhoods, 3 almost 9000 people accused of drug dealing or drug use were killed in the Philippines in the first year of his government – about one third by police in anti-drug operations. 4 Although portrayed as self-defense shootings, these acknowledged police killings are widely believed to be planned and staged, with security cameras and street lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the shooting. 5 According to the interviews and an unpublished report an intelligence officer shared with Reuters , the police are paid about 10,000 pesos ($200) for each killing of a drug suspect as well as other accused criminals. The monetary awards for each killing are alleged to rise to 20,000 pesos ($400) for a street pusher, 50,000 pesos ($990) for a member of a neighborhood council, one million pesos ($20,000) for distributors, retailers, and wholesalers, and five million ($100,000) for “drug lords.” Under pressure from higher-up authorities and top officials, local police officers and members of neighborhood councils draw up lists of drug suspects. Lacking any kind transparency, accountability, and vetting, these so-called “watch lists” end up as de facto hit lists. A Reuters investigation revealed that police officers were killing some 97 percent of drug suspects during police raids, 6 an extraordinarily high number and one that many times surpasses accountable police practices. That is hardly surprising, as police officers are not paid any cash rewards for merely arresting suspects. Both police officers and members of neighborhood councils are afraid not to participate in the killing policies, fearing that if they fail to comply they will be put on the kill lists themselves.

Similarly, there is widespread suspicion among human rights groups and monitors, 7 reported in regularly in the international press, that the police back and encourage the other extrajudicial killings — with police officers paying assassins or posing as vigilante groups. 8 A Reuters interview with a retired Filipino police intelligence officer and another active-duty police commander reported both officers describing in granular detail how under instructions from top-level authorities and local commanders, police units mastermind the killings. 9 No systematic investigations and prosecutions of these murders have taken place, with top police officials suggesting that they are killings among drug dealers themselves. 10

Such illegal vigilante justice, with some 1,400 extrajudicial killings, 11 was also the hallmark of Duterte’s tenure as Davao’s mayor, earning him the nickname Duterte Harry. And yet, far from being an exemplar of public safety and crime-free city, Davao remains the murder capital of the Philippines. 12 The current police chief of the Philippine National Police Ronald Dela Rosa and President Duterte’s principal executor of the war on drugs previously served as the police chief in Davao between 2010 and 2016 when Duterte was the town’s mayor.

In addition to the killings, mass incarceration of alleged drug users is also under way in the Philippines. The government claims that more than a million users and street-level dealers have voluntarily “surrendered” to the police. Many do so out of fear of being killed otherwise. However, in interviews with Reuters , a Philippine police commander alleged that the police are given quotas of “surrenders,” filling them by arresting anyone on trivial violations (such as being shirtless or drunk). 13 Once again, the rule of law is fundamentally perverted to serve a deeply misguided and reprehensible state policy.

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SMART DESIGN OF DRUG POLICIES VERSUS THE PHILIPPINES REALITY

Smart policies for addressing drug retail markets look very different than the violence and state-sponsored crime President Duterte has thrust upon the Philippines. Rather than state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and mass incarceration, policing retail markets should have several objectives: The first, and most important, is to make drug retail markets as non-violent as possible. Duterte’s policy does just the opposite: in slaughtering people, it is making a drug-distribution market that was initially rather peaceful (certainly compared to Latin America, 14 such as in Brazil 15 ) very violent – this largely the result of the state actions, extrajudicial killings, and vigilante killings he has ordered. Worse yet, the police and extrajudicial killings hide other murders, as neighbors and neighborhood committees put on the list of drug suspects their rivals and people whose land or property they want to steal; thus, anyone can be killed by anyone and then labeled a pusher.

The unaccountable en masse prosecution of anyone accused of drug trade involvement or drug use also serves as a mechanism to squash political pluralism and eliminate political opposition. Those who dare challenge President Duterte and his reprehensible policies are accused of drug trafficking charges and arrested themselves. The most prominent case is that of Senator Leila de Lima. But it includes many other lower-level politicians. Without disclosing credible evidence or convening a fair trial, President Duterte has ordered the arrest of scores of politicians accused of drug-trade links; three such accused mayors have died during police arrests, often with many other individuals dying in the shoot-outs. The latest such incident occurred on July 30, 2017 when Reynaldo Parojinog, mayor of Ozamiz in the southern Philippines, was killed during a police raid on his house, along with Parojinog’s wife and at least five other people.

Another crucial goal of drug policy should be to enhance public health and limit the spread of diseases linked to drug use. The worst possible policy is to push addicts into the shadows, ostracize them, and increase the chance of overdoses as well as a rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and hepatitis. In prisons, users will not get adequate treatment for either their addiction or their communicable disease. That is the reason why other countries that initially adopted similar draconian wars on drugs (such as Thailand in 2001 16 and Vietnam in the same decade 17 ) eventually tried to backpedal from them, despite the initial popularity of such policies with publics in East Asia. Even though throughout East Asia, tough drug policies toward drug use and the illegal drug trade remain government default policies and often receive widespread support, countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, and even Myanmar have gradually begun to experiment with or are exploring HARM reduction approaches, such as safe needle exchange programs and methadone maintenance, as the ineffective and counterproductive nature and human rights costs of the harsh war on drugs campaign become evident.

Moreover, frightening and stigmatizing drug users and pushing use deeper underground will only exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Even prior to the Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, the rate of HIV infections in the Philippines has been soaring due to inadequate awareness and failure to support safe sex practices, such as access to condoms. Along with Afghanistan, the Philippine HIV infection rate is the highest in Asia, increasing 50 percent between 2010 and 2015. 18 Among high-risk groups, including injection- drug users, gay men, transgender women, and female prostitutes, the rate of new infections jumped by 230 percent between 2011and 2015. Duterte’s war on drugs will only intensify these worrisome trends among drug users.

Further, as Central America has painfully learned in its struggles against street gangs, mass incarceration policies turn prisons into recruiting grounds for organized crime. Given persisting jihadi terrorism in the Philippines, mass imprisonment of low-level dealers and drug traffickers which mix them with terrorists in prisons can result in the establishment of dangerous alliances between terrorists and criminals, as has happened in Indonesia.

The mass killings and imprisonment in the Philippines will not dry up demand for drugs: the many people who will end up in overcrowded prisons and poorly-designed treatment centers (as is already happening) will likely remain addicted to drugs, or become addicts. There is always drug smuggling into prisons and many prisons are major drug distribution and consumption spots.

Even when those who surrendered are placed into so-called treatment centers, instead of outright prisons, large problems remain. Many who surrendered do not necessarily have a drug abuse problem as they surrendered preemptively to avoid being killed if they for whatever reason ended up on the watch list. Those who do have a drug addiction problem mostly do not receive adequate care. Treatment for drug addiction is highly underdeveloped and underprovided in the Philippines, and China’s rushing in to build larger treatment facilities is unlikely to resolve this problem. In China itself, many so-called treatment centers often amounted to de facto prisons or force-labor detention centers, with highly questionable methods of treatment and very high relapse rates.

As long as there is demand, supply and retailing will persist, simply taking another form. Indeed, there is a high chance that Duterte’s hunting down of low-level pushers (and those accused of being pushers) will significantly increase organized crime in the Philippines and intensify corruption. The dealers and traffickers who will remain on the streets will only be those who can either violently oppose law enforcement and vigilante groups or bribe their way to the highest positions of power. By eliminating low-level, mostly non-violent dealers, Duterte is paradoxically and counterproductively setting up a situation where more organized and powerful drug traffickers and distribution will emerge.

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Inducing police to engage in de facto shoot-to-kill policies is enormously corrosive of law enforcement, not to mention the rule of law. There is a high chance that the policy will more than ever institutionalize top-level corruption, as only powerful drug traffickers will be able to bribe their way into upper-levels of the Philippine law enforcement system, and the government will stay in business. Moreover, corrupt top-level cops and government officials tasked with such witch-hunts will have the perfect opportunity to direct law enforcement against their drug business rivals as well as political enemies, and themselves become the top drug capos. Unaccountable police officers officially induced to engage in extrajudicial killings easily succumb to engaging in all kinds of criminality, being uniquely privileged to take over criminal markets. Those who should protect public safety and the rule of law themselves become criminals.

Such corrosion of the law enforcement agencies is well under way in the Philippines as a result of President Duterte’s war on drugs. Corruption and the lack of accountability in the Philippine police l preceded Duterte’s presidency, but have become exacerbated since, with the war on drugs blatant violations of rule of law and basic legal and human rights principles a direct driver. The issue surfaced visibly and in a way that the government of the Philippines could not simply ignore in January 2017 when Philippine drug squad police officers kidnapped a South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo and extorted his family for money. Jee was ultimately killed inside the police headquarters. President Duterte expressed outrage and for a month suspended the national police from participating in the war on drugs while some police purges took places. Rather than a serious effort to root out corruption, those purges served principally to tighten control over the police. The wrong-headed illegal policies of Duterte’s war on drugs were not examined or corrected. Nor were other accountability and rule of law practices reinforced. Thus when after a month the national police were was asked to resume their role in the war on the drugs, the perverted system slid back into the same human rights violations and other highly detrimental processes and outcomes.

WHAT COUNTERNARCOTICS POLICIES THE PHILIPPINES SHOULD ADOPT

The Philippines should adopt radically different approaches: The shoot-to-kill directives to police and calls for extrajudicial killings should stop immediately, as should dragnets against low-level pushers and users. If such orders are  issued, prosecutions of any new extrajudicial killings and investigations of encounter killings must follow. In the short term, the existence of pervasive culpability may prevent the adoption of any policy that would seek to investigate and prosecute police and government officials and members of neighborhood councils who have been involved in the state-sanctioned slaughter. If political leadership in the Philippines changes, however, standing up a truth commission will be paramount. In the meantime, however, all existing arrested drug suspects need to be given fair trials or released.

Law-enforcement and rule of law components of drug policy designs need to make reducing criminal violence and violent militancy among their highest objectives. The Philippines should build up real intelligence on the drug trafficking networks that President Duterte alleges exist in the Philippines and target their middle operational layers, rather than low-level dealers, as well as their corruption networks in the government and law enforcement. However, the latter must not be used to cover up eliminating rival politicians and independent political voices.

To deal with addiction, the Philippines should adopt enlightened harm-reduction measures, including methadone maintenance, safe-needle exchange, and access to effective treatment. No doubt, these are difficult and elusive for methamphetamines, the drug of choice in the Philippines. Meth addiction is very difficult to treat and is associated with high morbidity levels. Instead of turning his country into a lawless Wild East, President Duterte should make the Philippines the center of collaborative East Asian research on how to develop effective public health approaches to methamphetamine addiction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY

It is imperative that the United States strongly and unequivocally condemns the war on drugs in the Philippines and deploys sanctions until state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and other state-authorized rule of law violations are ended. The United States should adopt such a position even if President Duterte again threatens the U.S.-Philippines naval bases agreements meant to provide the Philippines and other countries with protection against China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea. President Duterte’s pro-China preferences will not be moderated by the United States being cowed into condoning egregious violations of human rights. In fact, a healthy U.S.-Philippine long-term relationship will be undermined by U.S. silence on state-sanctioned murder.

However, the United States must recognize that drug use in the Philippines and East Asia more broadly constitute serious threats to society. Although internationally condemned for the war on drugs, President Duterte remains highly popular in the Philippines, with 80 percent of Filipinos still expressing “much trust” for him after a year of his war on drugs and 9,000 people dead. 19 Unlike in Latin America, throughout East Asia, drug use is highly disapproved of, with little empathy for users and only very weak support for drug policy reform. Throughout the region, as well as in the Philippines, tough-on-drugs approaches, despite their ineffective outcomes and human rights violations, often remain popular. Fostering an honest and complete public discussion about the pros and cons of various drug policy approaches is a necessary element in creating public demand for accountability of drug policy in the Philippines.

Equally important is to develop better public health approaches to dealing with methamphetamine addiction. It is devastating throughout East Asia as well as in the United States, though opiate abuse mortality rates now eclipse methamphetamine drug abuse problems. Meth addiction is very hard to treat and often results in severe morbidity. Yet harm reduction approaches have been predominately geared toward opiate and heroin addictions, with substitution treatments, such as methadone, not easily available for meth and other harm reduction approaches also not directly applicable.

What has been happening in the Philippines is tragic and unconscionable. But if the United States can at least take a leading role in developing harm reduction and effective treatment approaches toward methamphetamine abuse, its condemnation of unjustifiable and reprehensible policies, such as President Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, will far more soundly resonate in East Asia, better stimulating local publics to demand accountability and respect for rule of law from their leaders.

• Neil Jerome Morales, “Philippines Blames IS-linked Abu Sayyaf for Bomb in Duterte’s Davao,” Reuters , September 2, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-blast-idUSKCN11824W?il=0.
• Rishi Iyengar, “The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s War on Drugs,” Time , August 24, 2016, http://time.com/4462352/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-drugs-philippines-killing/.
• Jim Gomez, “Philippine President-Elect Urges Public to Kill Drug Dealers,” The Associated Press, June 5, 2016, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/58fc2315d488426ca2512fc9fc8d6427/philippine-president-elect-urges-public-kill-drug-dealers.
• Manuel Mogato and Clare Baldwin, “Special Report: Police Describe Kill Rewards, Staged Crime Scenes in Duterte’s Drug War,” Reuters , April 18, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-police-specialrep-idUSKBN17K1F4.
• Clare Baldwin , Andrew R.C. Marshall and Damir Sagolj , “Police Rack Up an Almost Perfectly Deadly Record in Philippine Drug War,” Reuters , http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/philippines-duterte-police/.
• See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “Philippines: Police Deceit in ‘Drug War’ Killings,” March 2, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings ; and Amnesty International, “Philippines: The Police’s Murderous War on the Poor,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/philippines-the-police-murderous-war-on-the-poor/.
• Reuters , April 18, 2017.
• Aurora Almendral, “The General Running Duterte’s Antidrug War,” The New York Times , June 2, 2017.
• “A Harvest of Lead,” The Economist , August 13, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21704793-rodrigo-duterte-living-up-his-promise-fight-crime-shooting-first-and-asking-questions.
• Reuters, April 18, 2017.
• Vanda Felbab-Brown and Harold Trinkunas, “UNGASS 2016 in Comparative Perspective: Improving the Prospects for Success,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/FelbabBrown-TrinkunasUNGASS-2016-final-2.pdf?la=en.
• See, for example, Paula Miraglia, “Drugs and Drug Trafficking in Brazil: Trends and Policies,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/Miraglia–Brazil-final.pdf?la=en .
• James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Thailand,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/WindleThailand-final.pdf?la=en .
• James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Vietnam,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/WindleVietnam-final.pdf.
• Aurora Almendral, “As H.I.V. Soars in the Philippines, Conservatives Kill School Condom Plan,” The New York Times , February 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/asia/as-hiv-soars-in-philippines-conservatives-kill-school-condom-plan.html?_r=0.
• Nicole Curato, “In the Philippines, All the President’s People,” The New York Times , May 31, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/opinion/philippines-rodrigo-duterte.html.

Foreign Policy

Southeast Asia

Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

August 27, 2021

March 26, 2019

October 22, 2017

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s "War on drugs"

Phelim Kine is deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch in New York, where he supervises the organization’s work on Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Kine is also an adjunct faculty member in the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College at the City University of New York. He lectures on human rights developments and challenges in Asia. Originally published in Summer 2017.

At about 4 p.m. on August 18, 2016, a police anti-drug raid swept through the neighborhood in Manila’s metropolitan Navotas district where Angelo Lafuente, a 23-year-old small appliances repairman, lived and worked. Two uniformed policemen accompanied by four armed men in civilian clothes detained Lafuente and took him away in a marked white police van. Twelve hours later, police at the Navotas police station presented Lafuente’s panic-stricken family members with photos of Lafuente, dead of gunshot wounds. The police report attributes his death to “unknown” gunmen and ignores the fact that he was last seen alive in police custody.

On September 27th, local government officials in the Manila slum where Virgilio Mirano lived with his wife and two children accused him of being a drug user and ordered him to appear at a ‘mass surrender’ ceremony three days later. Mirano never made it. Instead, just hours later, four armed men in civilian clothes and face masks burst into his home, dragged him into the street, and shot him six times execution-style while his family looked on. Police allowed the gunmen to leave the scene unimpeded through a nearby checkpoint. A police report attributes Mirano’s death to a shoot-out with anti-drug police that ended with Mirano dying in an “exchange of gunfire.” Witnesses dispute that account.

23-year-old Aljon Mesa and his brother, 34-year-old Danilo Mesa, were casual laborers in a fishing port in metro Manila’s Navotas district until their deaths in September. On the afternoon of September 20, 2016, six masked, armed men in civilian clothes detained Aljon and took him away on a motorcycle. About 30 minutes later, a uniformed policeman notified Aljon Mesa’s relatives that he was “breathing his last breath” under a nearby bridge. When family members arrived on the scene, they found him dead from gunshot wounds while the masked armed men who detained him stood nearby. Those men remained on the scene when uniformed police investigators arrived, indicating they were coordinating with the police.

Six days later, uniformed and plain-clothes police detained Danilo Mesa and took him into custody at the local municipal government office. His family could not afford the required bribe to free him, but assumed he would be safe in the custody of municipal authorities. At about 6 p.m., a group of masked, armed men in civilian clothes dragged him from the office. Shortly afterward, passersby found his body. His entire head had been wrapped in packing tape and he had been shot execution-style through the mouth. There are no police records of his killing.

Welcome to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drugs.’ The details of the killings of those four people provide grisly context for the hard data of the more than 7,000 suspected drug users and drug dealers killed by police and “unidentified gunmen” since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. They also challenge the Duterte government’s persistent denial that police are committing extrajudicial killings. That death toll also doesn’t include the victims that Duterte calls “collateral damage”— children shot dead in anti-drug operations. The extraordinary brutality of the Duterte drug war is undeniable. Many of the victims are found in back alleys or street corners wrapped in packing tape, their bodies bullet-ridden or bearing stab wounds and other signs of torture.  Duterte justifies his anti-drug campaign as a life-or-death struggle against a “drug menace” that he claims threatens to transform the Philippines into a “narco state.” He is untroubled by the fact that the statistics he brandishes to back up this hyperbole are flawed, exaggerated, or fabricated.

The Philippine National Police have claimed responsibility for 2,615 of those killings, an astronomical rise from the 68 killings by police in anti-drug operations between January 1 and June 15, 2016. Police justify that surge in killings on the basis that the victims uniformly “fought back.” Police attribute another 3,603 killings to “vigilantes” or “unidentified gunmen.” An additional 922 killings are classified by police as “cases where investigation has concluded,” despite a lack of any publicly-disclosed evidence of the results of those investigations and whether they resulted in any arrests or prosecution.

Human Rights Watch research into the deaths of Lafuente, Mirano, the Mesa brothers, and 28 other people  killed since Duterte took office exposes the  narrative of the Duterte drug war as a blatant falsehood. Interviews with witnesses and victims’ family members and scrutiny of police records indicate an alarming pattern of unlawful police conduct to cover up extrajudicial executions. Despite the Philippine National Police’s efforts to differentiate between killings by “unidentified gunmen,” or “vigilantes,” and those shot dead while resisting arrest, Human Rights Watch determined there were no meaningful differences in the cases investigated. In several incidents, suspects last seen alive in police custody who were shortly after found dead were categorized by police as “found bodies” or “deaths under investigation.” These discrepancies underminegovernment assertions that rival drug

gangs or “vigilantes” are responsible for most killings.

The incidents analyzed by Human Rights Watch demonstrated police coordination and planning, in some cases with the assistance of local government officials. Those elements of active police and government complicity undermine official assertions that the killings are the work of “rogue” officers or “vigilantes.” Research suggests that police involvement in the killings of drug suspects extends far beyond the officially acknowledged cases of police killings in “buy-bust” drug operations. That research paints a chilling portrait of Filipino victims, the majority of whom are impoverished urban slum dwellers, who have been gunned down in state-sanctioned death squad operations that demolish rule of law protections.

Duterte has defied the highest profile international criticism of the drug war killings. In August, he threatened to withdraw the Philippines from the United Nations in response to criticism from UN officials, including Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights. In October, comments by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) criticizing “high officials” of the Philippine government for public statements that “seem to condone such killings and further seem to encourage State forces and civilians alike to continue targeting these individuals with lethal force” prompted Duterte to threaten to pull the Philippines out of the ICC.

Duterte has also effectively eviscerated meaningful domestic opposition to his drug war. Duterte and pro-Duterte lawmakers have politically attacked his most vocal domestic critic, Senator Leila de Lima, a former justice secretary and chairwoman of the official Commission on Human Rights. Duterte’s Senate loyalists ousted de Lima from the chair of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights in September 2016 in an apparent reprisal for de Lima’s move to convene Senate hearings into the drug war killings.

The hearings prompted a torrent of hateful, misogynist invective from Duterte and other government officials. In August, Duterte went so far as to tell a crowd of supporters that de Lima should “hang herself.”  Duterte’s political vendetta against de Lima climaxed in February with her arrest and detention on politically-motivated charges of violating the country’s Dangerous Drugs Act, which prohibits the “sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution, and transportation of illegal drugs.” De Lima is in prison awaiting trial, but is fearful that her safety is at risk while behind bars.

Despite the thousands of often gruesome killings linked to Duterte’s drug war, his often profane defiance of international criticism, and his steamrolling of domestic critics, he maintains high public popularity ratings. In January, the Pulse Asia polling firm released data that indicated his “trust and approval” ratings were at 83 percent, considerably higher than those of other senior elected officials.

However, surveys on Philippine public assessments of Duterte’s drug war express concern about its death toll, with 94 percent  of those polled in December 2016 expressing support for the arrest, rather than the  killing, of drug suspects. These apparent statistical contradictions reflect how conceptions of the sanctity of life among a relatively pious Catholic-majority nation coexist with the persistent public appeal of Duterte’s plain speaking populist style. Those popularity polls also fail to take into account the influence of a pro-Duterte online ‘keyboard army,’  who harass, intimidate, and try to silence any public expressions of opposition or dismay to the drug war killing campaign on social media.

Duterte’s pursuit of his drug war despite international opprobrium and its skyrocketing death toll is dismaying, but not surprising. Duterte’s presidential electoral platform included lurid pledges of near-biblical scale extrajudicial violence and promises of mass killings of tens of thousands of “criminals,” whose bodies he would dump in Manila Bay. And Duterte had a specific model for that approach to ‘crime control,’ which he honed during his two decades as mayor of Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao.

Davao City is synonymous for many Filipinos with the Davao Death Squad, a shadowy group of gunmen linked to the killings of hundreds of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children as young as 14. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Duterte marketed his links to Davao and the existence of the Davao Death Squad as a vote-grabbing branding opportunity rather than a career-derailing political handicap. On the eve of the May 9 presidential elections, which Duterte won against four other candidates with nearly 40 percent of the vote, Duterte told a crowd of more than 300,000 people exactly what to expect if elected. “If I make it to the presidential palace,” he said, “I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, holdup men, and do-nothings, you better get out because I’ll kill you.”

Human Rights Watch did not uncover any direct evidence of Duterte’s participation in any of the Davao Death Squad killings in a 2009 investigation. But that probe did uncover involvement of Davao City officials and police. Duterte himself has done little to distance himself from allegations of involvement in the death squads. In May 2015, he publicly admitted having a role. “Am I the death squad? True. That is true,” he said.

Duterte retracted that admission days later, but has made numerous statements over the past few decades that seek to justify the extrajudicial killings of criminal suspects. In 2001-2002, Duterte frequently took to local radio or television in Davao to announce the names of “criminals.” The Davao Death Squad would subsequently hunt down and kill some of those same people. In December, Duterte told an international business gathering that he had personally killed criminal suspects while mayor of Davao City and that he would cruise the city on a motorcycle “looking for a confrontation so I could kill.” There have yet to be any successful prosecutions for the killings linked to the Davao Death Squad. Meanwhile, the killings in Davao City continue, and in other Philippine cities the Davao Death Squad has apparently inspired copycat death squad operations. Since September, two self-confessed former members of the Davao Death Squad have come forward and testified to the Philippine Senate that Duterte was the mastermind behind the killings. Duterte has dismissed their allegations and insists that all killings in Davao during his time as mayor were the result of “legitimate police operations.”

Duterte’s pursuit of his drug war has not been diplomatically cost-free. The US Embassy in Manila announced on December 14 that a US government foreign aid agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), would deny the Philippine government new funding  due to “significant concerns around rule of law and civil liberties in the Philippines.” The statement justified that decision on the basis that criteria for MCC aid recipients “[include] not just a passing scorecard but also a demonstrated commitment to the rule of law, due process and respect for human rights.” That funding denial by MCC, which disbursed US$434 million to the Philippines from 2011 to 2016,  will most likely lead to the cancellation of a second five-year funding grant for a large-scale infrastructure development project agreed to by the MCC in December 2015.

Duterte got more bad news. In March 2017, visiting EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström warned the Philippine government that human rights-abusing policies, including the drug war, pose a threat to exports to the European Union. She specified that unless the government took action to address the EU’s concerns, the Philippines risks losing tariff-free export of up to 6,000 products under the EU’s human rights benchmarks linked to the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+) trade program. A Philippine presidential spokesman, Ernesto Abella, dismissed those concerns as evidence of EU ignorance about the Philippines.

But Duterte also has enthusiastic foreign supporters who are untroubled by the human rights implications of the Duterte government’s signature policy. The Chinese Embassy in Manila issued a statement in July 2016 vowing unconditional support for the drug war. A China Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, echoed that position ahead of Duterte’s state visit to China in mid-October by stating, “We understand and support the Philippines’ policies to combat drugs under the leadership of President Duterte.”

On November 30, the Russian ambassador to the Philippines expressed unconditional support for Duterte’s war on drugs, saying he was “deeply impressed” with the president’s efforts to build a relationship with Russia and stating that, “We sincerely wish you every success on your campaign [against drugs]. We understand well your legitimate concerns. As for the methods, we refrain from any comments,” explaining that as a Russian diplomat, he had no right to comment on “domestic developments” in the Philippines.

Duterte has also benefited from the reticence of close bilateral allies to publicly criticize his drug war. Exhibit A for that approach has been  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who during his January state visit to the Philippines announced a five-year, US$800 million Japanese government Official Development Assistance package to “promote economic and infrastructure development.” He also promised unspecified financial support for drug rehabilitation projects in the Philippines. In Manila, Abe stated that, “On countering illegal drugs, we want to work together with the Philippines through relevant measures of support,” without elaborating. But during his visit and afterward, Abe made no public reference to the war on drugs and its skyrocketing death toll.

The support of Russia, Japan, and China may help the Duterte government offset the impact of aid and trade curbs imposed the United States and the European Union. But they will not negate the lingering threat to his longer-term legitimacy posed by the threat of eventual domestic or international prosecution for killings linked to his anti-drug campaign. No evidence thus far shows that Duterte planned or ordered specific extrajudicial killings. But his repeated calls for killings as part of his drug campaign could constitute acts instigating the crime of murder. In addition, Duterte’s statements that seek to encourage vigilantes among the general population to commit violence against suspected drug users would constitute incitement to violence. Duterte and senior officials in his government may also face possible charges of crimes against humanity for their repeated calls encouraging the killing of alleged drug dealers and users, indicative of a government policy to attack a specific civilian population.

In January, Duterte vowed to extend his drug war, opening his statement with a promise that it “will solve drugs, criminality, and corruption in three to six months,” until the end of his term in 2022. Duterte may well find that domestic or international efforts for justice for the drug war killings may derail that goal.

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Sanaysay Tungkol Sa Droga: Halimbawa Ng Sanaysay Tungkol Sa Droga

Halimbawa ng sanaysay tungkol sa droga.

SANAYSAY TUNGKOL SA DROGA – Ang sanaysay ay isang uri ng panitikan kung saan ito ay hindi mauubusan ng gamit. Pwede itong maging pormal, personal, analitikal o siyentipiko.

Sa paksang ito, titignan natin ang mga halimbawa ng sanaysay tungkol sa Droga.

Karapatan Ng Tao

Isa sa mga karapatan ng tao ay ang magsaya at libangin ang sarili. Lahat tayo ay dapat ding humanap ng oras para naman mapawi ang mga panahong pagod tayo sa pagtatrabaho o eskwela.

Gayunman, may ilan na sa maling landas nahanap ang kasiyahan at paraan ng pagtakas sa mga suliranin ng buhay.

Ang iba ay nagkaroon ng masamang bisyo tulad ng ipingbabawal na gamot. Imbes na mapabuti, naging dahilan pa ito ng pagkalugmok ng marami.

Unti-unti ay naging suliranin na ng lipunan ang iligal na droga. Nagbunga na ito ng kaliwa’t kanang kriminalidad tulad ng pagnanakaw, panloloko ng kapuwa, at maging pagpaslang ng mga inosenteng buhay.

Dahil tila wala na sa katinuan ang mga nalulong sa bisyong ito, wala nang sinisino ang mga ito at maging mga mahal sa buhay ay ginagawan na ng kasamaan.

Maraming pamilya na ang nasira ng ipinagbabawal na gamot. Maraming mga magulang ang nakalimutan na ang responsibilidad sa kanilang mga anak. Mayroon namang mga anak na kahit nasa wastong gulang na ay pasanin pa rin ng mga magulang dahil sa bisyo.

Mainit din sa mata ng batas ang mga lulong sa droga. Mayroong ‘giyera’ ang pamahalaan sa mga ito at talamak ang pagkakapaslang ng mga gumagamit at nagbebenta ng iligal na droga.

Lason ng lipunan ang ipinagbabawal na gamot. Maraming paraan upang libangin ang sarili. Iwasan ang mga bisyo at ituon ang oras sa mga mas makabuluhang bagay.

Isa pang halimbawa galing kay JeniJoyce

Marami ang nagsasabi na ito ay gamot na nakapagpapagaling ng ilang karamdaman. Pero sa dami rin ng mga sinasabi tungkol sa mali at masamang epekto nito sa pag-iisip, natatakot ang ilan na subukang tikman ito. Kung iisipin, totoo namang gamot na pampalakas ang droga. Pero nais pa ba nating subukang gamitin ito kahit na may tendensya tayong maadik dito? Hindi kaya ay humantong lang ito sa sobrang paggamit anupat makasakit na tayo ng iba?

 Ang mga taong naadik sa paggamit nito ay lumilikha ng gulo sa lipunan. Madalas na sila na lamang ang laman ng mga balita tungkol sa matindi at brutal na pananakit/ pagpatay sa mga babae, batang babae, lalaki, batang lalaki at pamilya pa nga. Nagiging makasarili dahil sa kanilang kagustuhan na masapatan ang kanilang adiksyon, nagagawa nilang magbenta ng mga bagay-bagay ng hindi pinag-iisipan ito. Isa pa, nagagawa din nilang magnakaw, manggahasa at pumatay.

 Nakalulungkot, sa kabila ng pagsugpo ng batas sa mga taong gumagamit ng droga patuloy parin silang dumadami. At karaniwang nabibiktima sa paggamit ng pinagbabawal na gamot na ito ay ang ating mga mahal na kabataan. Kaya ang sanaysay na ito, ay makatulong sana sa mga tao na maintindihan ang masamang epekto nito. Huwag hayaang sirain ng droga ang buhay mo!

Like this article? READ ALSO: Sanaysay Tungkol Sa Edukasyon: Halimbawa Ng Sanaysay

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Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — War on Drugs — My Views On The War On Drugs In The Philippines

My Views on The War on Drugs in The Philippines

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Published: Sep 1, 2020

Words: 995 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

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Human Rights Consequences of the “War on Drugs” in the Philippines

Human Rights Watch Statement to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission

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Co-Chairmen Representatives McGovern and Hultgren and members of the commission, thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing on the human rights consequences of the “war on drugs” in the Philippines.

This hearing comes at a critical moment for the people of the Philippines.

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Since taking office, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has unleashed a human rights calamity. The government’s murderous “war on drugs,” drug-related overcrowding of jails, and the harassment and prosecution of drug war critics has caused a steep decline in respect for basic rights since Duterte’s inauguration on June 30, 2016. Duterte justifies his anti-drug campaign as a life-or-death struggle against a “drug menace” that he claims threatens to transform the Philippines into a “narco state.” He is untroubled by the fact that the statistics he brandishes to back up this hyperbole are flawed, exaggerated, or fabricated.

In the Philippines, security forces and “unidentified gunmen” have killed more than 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers since July 1, 2016, including at least 3,116 killings by police, according to government data. That death toll also doesn’t include the victims that Duterte calls “collateral damage” – children shot in the crossfire of anti-drug operations. The extraordinary brutality of the Duterte drug war is undeniable. Many of the victims are found in back alleys or street corners wrapped in packing tape, their bodies bullet-ridden or bearing stab wounds and other signs of torture.

Human Rights Watch field research found that government claims that the deaths of suspected drug users and dealers were lawful were blatant falsehoods. That research paints a chilling portrait of mostly impoverished urban slum dwellers being gunned down in state-sanctioned “death squad” operations that demolish rule of law protections. Interviews with witnesses and victims’ relatives and analysis of police records expose a pattern of unlawful police conduct designed to paint a veneer of legality over extrajudicial executions that may amount to crimes against humanity. Our investigations revealed that police routinely kill drug suspects in cold blood and then cover up their crimes by planting drugs and guns at the scene.

While the Philippine National Police have publicly sought to distinguish between suspects killed while resisting arrest and killings by “unknown gunmen” or “vigilantes,” Human Rights Watch found no such distinction in the cases investigated. In several such cases, the police dismissed allegations of involvement when only hours before the suspects had been in police custody. Such cases call into question government assertions that most killings have been carried out by vigilantes or rival drug gangs.

Efforts to seek accountability for drug-war deaths have gone nowhere. Philippine National Police Director-General Ronaldo dela Rosa has rejected calls for a thorough and impartial probe of the killings as “legal harassment” and said it “dampens the morale” of police officers. Duterte and some of his key ministers have praised the killings as proof of the “success” of the anti-drug campaign. Duterte and Secretary of Justice Vitaliano Aguirre III have sought to justify their total disregard for the rule of law and due legal process for “drug personalities” by questioning the humanity of suspected drug users and drug dealers. Duterte’s instigation of unlawful police violence and the incitement of vigilante killings may amount to crimes against humanity in violation of international law.

The Duterte administration has subjected prominent critics of the government’s abusive anti-drug campaign to harassment, intimidation, and even arrest. In February 2017, the police detained former secretary of justice Senator Leila de Lima on politically motivated drug charges. Her arrest followed a relentless government campaign against her in evident response to her outspoken criticism of Duterte’s “war on drugs” and her calls for accountability. Other critics of the killings – including activists, journalists, international officials, and ordinary Filipinos – have been threatened online by pro-Duterte supporters and trolls. Those targeted include Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, and international experts on drug dependency.

The “war on drugs” has also worsened the already dire conditions of Philippine jail facilities, including inadequate food and unsanitary conditions. Government data indicates that the country’s jail facilities run by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, which have a maximum capacity of 20,399, currently hold nearly 132,000 detainees, an overwhelming majority of them awaiting trial or sentencing. The bureau attributes the overcrowding to the arrest of tens of thousands of suspected drug users and dealers since the anti-drug campaign began.

The Philippine government’s drug war has sparked a surge in demand for drug rehabilitation facilities by those fearful of the government’s extrajudicial measures. The December 2016 opening of a China-funded “10,000-bed mega treatment and rehabilitation center” within the Fort Magsaysay military base 75 miles north of Manila, however, raises serious concerns. Instead of providing evidence-based drug treatment services, the rehabilitation services may mirror models documented by Human Rights Watch elsewhere in Southeast Asia where the only “treatment” offered was abuse. The Philippines is in dire need of voluntary, community-based drug dependence treatment services that comport with international best practice standards and human rights principles. Until there is a clear commitment from the Philippine government to support drug rehabilitation services based on these principles, the US government should not provide support for rehabilitation services – and Congress should ensure they are not funded.

Despite statements from President Donald Trump that appear supportive of Duterte’s abusive policies, the US State Department has taken some important steps to register disapproval of the drug war. These include the November 2016 suspension of the sale of 26,000 military assault rifles to the Philippine National Police. The State Department took this step in large part because of opposition from Senator Ben Cardin, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who opposed the deal due to “concerns about human rights violations in the Philippines.”

In addition, the US Embassy in Manila announced on December 14 that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) would defer a decision on new funding for the Philippine government due to “significant concerns around rule of law and civil liberties in the Philippines.” The statement justified that decision on the basis that criteria for MCC aid recipients “includes not just a passing scorecard but also a demonstrated commitment to the rule of law, due process and respect for human rights.”

Human Rights Watch urges the State Department and the MCC to maintain these suspensions of assistance until the killing stops and meaningful steps to accountability are underway. We encourage Congress to play an active oversight role to ensure vigilance going forward.

Congress can also engage more directly to stop the bloodshed in the Philippines. First, it should further restrict assistance to the Philippine security forces by imposing specific human rights benchmarks, including requiring Duterte to end the “drug war” killings and allow a United Nations-led investigation into the deaths. And Congress can direct the Secretary of State to work with other foreign governments to impose similar restrictions.

Notably, on May 4, 2017 Senators Cardin (D-MD), Rubio (R-FL), Schatz (D-HI), and Markey (D-MA) introduced the “Philippines Human Rights Accountability and Counternarcotics Act of 2017,” a bill that places restrictions on defense aid to the country, provides additional funding for the Philippine human rights community, and supports a public health approach to drug use. We would like to see a similar bill introduced in the House and would encourage prompt passage into law, as doing so may save lives while also reminding Duterte that his government will pay a price for its ongoing murderous campaign. 

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