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[av_heading heading=’EDITORIAL | A different perspective’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Monday, May 8, 2017
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IN AN unofficial visit to the country, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary Killings or Arbitrary Executions Agnes Callamard spoke in a forum about perspectives on drug policies at the University of the Philippines. She observed that the current policy on the war on drugs is lacking in addressing the socio-economic causes of the illegal drug trade. She then suggested that policy alternatives be explored to formulate programs which prioritize people’s rights, framed within the structural causes of poverty.
It is unfortunate that the Duterte administration viewed Callamard’s visit as an attempt to undermine its war on drugs. Instead of welcoming the visit – even if unofficial – as an opportunity to further improve the antidrug campaign by at least hearing other perspectives, it acted like it was trying to hide something from the world.
Interestingly, killings done in the course of counterinsurgency programs, many of them human rights defenders, likewise merited the attention of Callamard. She said “these programs, implemented across regimes, supposedly seeks to end armed rebellion yet have victimized thousands of Filipinos in peasant and indigenous communities, with attacks on civilians and members of progressive organizations legitimized as them being ‘enemies of the State’.”
Callamard’s predecessor, Prof. Philip Alston, emphasized the rescinding of counter-insurgency programs as a step towards putting a stop to extrajudicial killings, in his 2007 report to the UN Human Rights Council. But these recommendations remained largely unheeded, if not totally ignored by the Arroyo and Aquino administrations.
It is not unreasonable to say that the impunity by which extrajudicial killings were committed since Martial Law and the disregard of the Alston Report are among the reasons why EJKs, in line with the counterinsurgency campaign and the war on drugs, continue.
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