BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
THE TRUTHS revealed during the recent Senate hearings on the war on illegal drugs have shown that from 2016 to 2022, the State itself became an apparent enemy of the people and exercised power in a way that was an alleged crime in itself.
The gross violations of the rule of law came when the State made itself the police, judge and executioner and bypassed the judicial system as it attempted — but failed — to eradicate the selling and trafficking of illegal drugs.
The extrajudicial killing of at least 6,000 innocent Filipinos by police brought loss and suffering to their families.
The purported state policy of “accuse and kill” encouraged the police and hired guns to kill with impunity and without moral or legal responsibility. That had a disastrous impact on the psyche of the Filipino people, from which they are still recovering.
During one Senate hearing, one brave Catholic priest, Fr. Flavie Villanueva, dared to stand up and speak for the victims and against the human rights violations committed against them and their families.
Nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch claim that as many as 30,000 died in the anti-drug campaign. Human rights investigators, including International Criminal Court officials, are independently investigating the horrendous toll on human lives.
In that hearing, Fr. Villanueva and Randy delos Santos, uncle of teenager Kian Loyd delos Santos, who was shot dead by three policemen in a Caloocan alleyway in August 2017, presented a long scroll containing the names of 312 victims who were allegedly murdered by police and the families they left behind were being protected under the priest’s care project.
Sen. Bato Dela Rosa, the former police general under former president Rodrigo Duterte who allegedly led a death squad in Davao City, said it was all propaganda. He asked why the priest did not file charges.
Mr. Delos Santos said there were no police investigations into the deaths, but there were ongoing cases.
If the 6,000 drug suspects did fight back against the police when they were killed, there should have been 6,000 guns as evidence.
“Where are they?” Father Villanueva asked.
He earlier testified that guns with the same serial numbers were found at several locations where the suspects were killed, suggesting that the weapons had been planted to make it appear there had been a shootout, not an execution. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reached a similar conclusion in a 2020 report. (To be continued)/PN
