Pubdate: Wed, 03 Aug 2016
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Damien Gayle

MORE THAN 700 KILLED IN PHILIPPINES DRUGS CRACKDOWN

Human Rights Groups Call on UN to Condemn Deaths Anti-Drug Drive 
'Excuse for Killings' Say Campaigners

More than 700 suspected drug users or dealers have been summarily 
executed by police or vigilantes in the Philippines in less than 
three months, say human rights campaigners, who are calling on the UN 
to denounce the killings.

Human Rights Watch, Stop Aids and International HIV/Aids Alliance are 
among more than 300 civil society groups that have signed joint 
letters to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the 
UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), urging them to speak out.

"We are calling on the UN drug control bodies to publicly condemn 
these atrocities in the Philippines. This senseless killing cannot be 
justified as a drug control measure," said Ann Fordham, executive 
director of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), which 
coordinated the letter. "Their silence is unacceptable, while people 
are being killed on the streets day after day."

The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, won an electoral 
landslide in May after pledging to fill funeral parlours with drug 
dealers. He told Filipinos on the day of his inauguration last month: 
"If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as 
getting their parents to do it would be too painful."

Since 10 May - the day Duterte was elected - at least 704 people have 
been killed because of suspected drug links, according to monitoring 
by journalists at ABS CBN News, a Filipino broadcaster.

One influential senator has called for an investigation into the 
killings. In a senate speech, Leila de Lima, a former justice 
minister, said: "We cannot wage the war against drugs with blood. We 
will only be trading drug addiction with another more malevolent kind 
of addiction. This is the compulsion for more killing."

She said police were summarily killing even innocent people, using 
the anti-drug campaign as an excuse.

A statement last week by the citizens' council for human rights 
accused Duterte and his officials of abandoning due process and human 
rights in their zeal to fight the war on drugs. "Units of the 
Philippine national police, under the command of his close associate 
General Ronald ('Bato') dela Rosa, have turned many low-income 
neighbourhoods in the country into freefire zones," it said.

"The bloody encounters taking place daily have polarised the country 
between those who support the president's quick and dirty methods of 
dealing with drugs and crime, and those who regard them as illegal, 
immoral, and self-defeating."

The killings appear to have been carried out by police, who attribute 
the violence to suspects who "resisted arrest and shot at police", 
and vigilante groups emboldened by Duterte's promises of impunity.

In one case last month, eight suspected "drug personalities" were 
shot dead by police in a pre-dawn raid in the town of Matalam, about 
560 miles (900km) south of Manila. On the same day in Manila, police 
said they found a man lying dead with his head wrapped in packaging 
tape and his torso covered with a cardboard sign reading: "I am a pusher."

On another night in the capital, six people were killed in a single 
night by gunmen on motorcycles. One of the victims' wives was 
photographed cradling his body in an image that has become emblematic 
of the Filipino drug war.

Jennelyn Olaires, the wife of Michael Siaron, who police said was 
killed by a vigilante group, told Reuters her husband had not been a 
drug dealer but that he was addicted to drugs. She said the 
29-year-old made money by riding a pedicab - a bicycle with a sidecar 
- - and did odd jobs. He even voted for Duterte in the 9 May election.

The IDPC's letters ask the UNODC and INCB to urge Duterte to 
immediately end all incitements to kill people suspected of dealing 
drugs and act to fulfil all global human rights obligations, 
including rights to life, health, due process and a fair trial.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom