Due process

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LET US BE CLEAR. There should be no compromise on the necessity to rid the country of crime and narcotics. An intensified campaign against illegal drugs is laudable and, in fact, long-overdue. However, this relentless drive must be waged with the highest regard for life and respect for human rights. Its methods must be conducted in such ways that will spare casualties among innocents, and accord due process to suspects.

Since his election, President Duterte has been issuing statements that outright call on military and police forces to go hard on people implicated in the illegal drug trade. His statements are obviously being taken as nothing short of formal policy on drug killings. Now into his 14th month in office, the President’s war on drugs has claimed more than 1,3000 civilian lives under the operations of the police and their toleration of vigilante groups wantonly wreaking havoc on urban poor communities.

A new wave of killings in the police’s antidrug campaign that has left at least 80 people dead in Metro Manila and Bulacan last week has raised alarm and outrage among the Filipino people. The outrage was sparked by the killing of 17-year-old student Kian Loyd delos Santos in Caloocan City on the night of Aug 16. Officers said he had pulled a gun on them, forcing them to shoot him; but a closed circuit television footage showed Delos Santos being carried to a place where his body was later found, raising doubt to an official  police report that stated he was shot because he fired at the cops first.

President Duterte recently acknowledged his failure to address the drug problem within his self-imposed deadline ranging three to six months. It is obvious that the kill, kill, kill strategy is not working. It is obvious, too, that the government can only purge the poor and vulnerable, the small-fry dealers and victim users while drug syndicates, narco-politicians and narco-generals and cops who should be treated with punitive actions are roaming scathe-free. The ringleaders of drug cartels, big-time drug lords, and their protectors in government have in general escaped the heightened anti-drug campaign.

Instituting safeguards are vital to prevent the anti-drug and anti-crime campaigns from being discredited as lacking in due process and violative of human rights and the rule of law. Vigilante killings, whether emboldened by the heightened anti-drug offensive or committed for political or personal motivations, must be prevented and condemned. A police force that has claimed for itself the unchecked power of life and death over the citizenry poses as much of a danger to society as the proliferation of illegal drugs.
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