HUMAN rights alliance Karapatan-Panay opposes the plan of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to deploy the Philippine National Police (PNP) in house-to-house searches for COVID-19 affected persons.
Such an action poses a real threat to the rights, safety and well-being of these persons and their family members. As a health issue, it is the health practitioners and not policemen who should be assigned to handle the task.
Policemen could be infected by COVID-19 as they go from one house to another, or they could become the carriers.
Records show at least a thousand from the PNP have already been tested COVID19-positive and nine have died of the virus.
If only the government could provide speedy testing and adequate quarantine facilities of COVID-affected persons, then they would not have to be sent home, only to be eventually “hunted”.
Just the plan to deploy armed policemen in tokhang-style house-to-house search makes people cringe in fear at the thought of COVID-19-affected persons or their family members getting hurt or killed “dahil nanlaban”.
The PNP chief, General Archie Gamboa’s likening of COVID-19 patients to criminals as subjects of police hunt made matters worse. Speaking before PNP Region 6, he said the plan is like locating a criminal and when you have located one, you have to find his accomplices.
We know the dangers to life and limb faced by a suspected criminal in the hands of police officers.
Instead of resorting to draconian measures utilizing armed policemen, the government should strengthen the capacity of public health services to more effectively face the present contagion. – REYLAN VERGARA, secretary general, Panay Alliance Karapatan
