IN JULY last year, or three years into drug war launched by the Philippine government, the United Nations Human Rights Council requested its High Commissioner to submit a comprehensive report on the human rights situation in the Philippines.
The move was initiated by Iceland, which eventually overcame stiff opposition led by China.
In reaction, the President reproached the small European nation: “You can understand no crime, there is no policeman either and they just go about eating ice.” Filipinos comprise the largest Asian population in Iceland’s less than 400,000 population.
Last June 4, the High Commissioner released the requested report after looking into allegations of widespread killings in the duration of the Philippine war on drugs.
The report dwells extensively on Oplan Double Barrel – a police circular that seeks to curb illegal drugs by institutionalizing Project Tokhang.
The UN report describes tokhang as it was designed: to eradicate illegal drugs in the barangays through “house to house visitations to persuade suspects to stop illegal drug activities.”
The report notes that a measly one percent of apprehensions made during these visitations were based on warrants of arrest.
The High Commissioner expressed concern over what local human rights defenders have decried all along – tokhang evades due process requirements because it does not entail the issuance of search or arrest warrants, and may be undertaken solely on the basis of a drug watch list submitted by barangay officials.
The UN report further observes that the terms “negation” and “neutralization” of drug personalities appear throughout Oplan Double Barrel. The report considers them ill-defined and ominous language “that may have emboldened police to treat the circular as a permission to kill.”
The High Commissioner also examined police reports submitted to the Philippine Supreme Court. Given as a sampling are 22 anti-drug operations in which 29 people were killed in their homes. The police claimed that the targets were killed after resisting.
The spot reports submitted by the police, however, bear strikingly similar language. The victims’ alleged utterance is invariably “putang ina mo pulis ka pala” (“so you are a police officer, son of a bitch).”
The actions of the targets are likewise almost uniform (“suspect drew his weapon, fired at lawmen but missed”). According to the High Commissioner, this raised doubts about whether the spot reports were only filled pro forma.
Also examined were 25 police operations in Metro Manila where police claim to have recovered satchels of shabu and guns allegedly used by those who were killed while resisting arrest. The police repeatedly recovered guns bearing the same serial numbers from different victims in different locations.
Forty-five persons were killed in these 25 operations. The High Commissioner identified seven handguns with unique serial numbers. Each handgun appeared in at least two separate crime scenes, while two of them re-appeared in five different crime scenes.
This suggests, according to the High Commissioner, a pattern of planting of evidence by police officers. This casts doubt on the self-defense narrative, implying that the victims were likely unarmed at the time of killing.
The High Commissioner uses unguarded language in characterizing allegations of extrajudicial killings in the campaign against illegal drugs. The report expresses concern over “the near impunity” by which these violations were perpetrated.
Government claims that the Police Internal Affairs Service automatically investigates deaths that occur during police operations. According to government, the IAS launched 4,538 investigations between July 2016 and May 2019.
Yet government can cite only one case – that of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos – where three police officers were convicted of a drug campaign-related killing. That is owing to a damning CCTV footage and the public condemnation that followed the incredible denials of the perpetrators.
It is easy to spot material inconsistencies in the statements of police officers involved in the apprehension and investigation of the accused. Our Supreme Court has been reversing convictions for basic failure of the police to comply with the requirements of the anti-drug law regarding chain of custody, thus losing the corpus delicti of the offense.
Government was quick to respond to the report. Spokesman Harry Roque rejected its conclusions, saying that “the Philippine Government notes the recommendations made by the OHCHR, but cannot commit to their full implementation given the faulty conclusions on which they were premised.”
Among those rejected recommendations is the repeal of the police circular on tokhang, the discontinuation of the compilation and publication of drug watchlists, and government making available legal, financial, psycho-social services to families of victims of drug-related killings.
Government may well reconsider its outright rejection of the High Commissioner’s recommendations. It may have missed one other important recommendation contained in that report.
In the absence of clear and measurable outcomes from domestic mechanisms, the High Commissioner calls on the international community, including the Human Rights Council, to “consider options for international accountability measures.”
Inaction may not be a bankable response to the Iceland initiative./PN
