(AP) - PRESIDENT Duterte said on Monday that the bloody antidrug campaign, that has left nearly 1,800 people dead, did not amount to genocide, but he nevertheless assured the policemen he was ready to go to jail to defend them from lawsuits.

Mr. Duterte drew a line between the widespread killings sparked by his antidrug war and the brutality under Syrian President Bashar Assad and the atrocities committed by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

"Genocide? Who did I kill? I did not kill any child. I did not drop barrel (bombs) just like Assad," the President said in a speech to mark National Heroes' Day before war veterans, ambassadors and top officials. "I'm fighting ... criminals."

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THERE seems to be no doubt on the unwavering commitment of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte to fulfill his campaign promise of going all-out against the drug menace, come hell or high water.

The campaign rhetoric had hinted how bloody the war against illegal drugs and criminality might be-like when then presidential candidate Duterte impressed upon the electorate that 100,000 criminals could die and their bodies dumped into Manila Bay to fatten the fish there-but the actual number of fatalities can still be very alarming, particularly to human rights advocates.

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When the late Rafael Salas became the first head of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in 1969, among his young recruits was Cecile Joaquin.

Cecile was still working in New York in what was renamed the UN Population Fund when she met a Filipino lawyer some years later. The lawyer, Perfecto Yasay Jr., traveled the world after being named vice president of the international YMCA when he was just in his early 20s. Romance bloomed between the two, which led to marriage.

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Nobody, not even the poor, can justify getting into illegal drugs, President Duterte stressed, and there must be an "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" principle of retributive justice to finally end the menace.

As this developed, Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas issued a prayer for the healing of the nation amid the rising number of killings related to the war on drugs.

"They know that is prohibited, whether you are poor or rich," Duterte said Monday night as he reiterated his heart would never bleed for families of those killed in government operations, even if some of them were supposedly forced to become drug pushers to earn a living.

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The Europen Union ( EU) has expressed concern over the spate of killings in the Duterte administration's campaign against illegal drugs, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza said yesterday.

In a press conference at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Dureza said when he met with EU officials in Brussels, Belgium last Aug. 25, "they asked about the issue on drug campaign in the country."

"They told me that many people are being killed... So many of our agreements with the EU have something to do with human rights issues, like the free tariff privilege with the EU. It is important that we clarified it to them," Dureza said.

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Pedicab driver Reyjin dives into a neighbor's house for a quick meth fix, fearful of taking a bullet to the head in President Duterte's brutal war on drugs but unable to quit.

More than 2,000 people have died violent deaths since Duterte took office two months ago and immediately implemented his scorched-earth plans to eradicate drugs in society, ordering police to shoot dead traffickers and urging ordinary citizens to kill addicts.

The bloodbath has seen unknown assailants kill more than half the victims, according to police statistics, raising fears that security forces and hired assassins are roaming through communities and shooting dead anyone suspected of being involved in drugs.

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Judging from foreign media reports, the Duterte administration is attracting a lot of international attention, much of it for the wrong reasons.

President Duterte will probably tell the foreign media to go to hell, but it's the Philippines that's taking a hit from all the bad press.

So far, most foreign governments have refrained from publicly commenting on the drug-related mass killings, now about to shoot past 2,000. But I've been told that diplomats representing key global players are now touching base with certain administration officials, mainly to send word that the negative reports have started taking their toll on tourism and investments from their countries.

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WE, THE members of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines, acknowledge our active role as a visible force and prophetic voice in social life, in working for the common good. A role embraced by the Lord Jesus himself when he quoted the prophet Isaiah as he began his ministry: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." (Luke 4:18 19)

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CANBERRA - Since President Duterte launched his war on drug syndicates on July 1, he has plunged the Philippines into a multitheater conflict against a broad front of international institutions, including the United Nations, its human rights rapporteurs, human rights watchdog groups, Amnesty International, the country's Chief Justice and other domestic critics of his violence-driven campaign.

Hundreds of suspected drug dealers have been killed in alleged extrajudicial executions as the administration pursued the President's campaign promise to exterminate the drug menace in three to six months of his presidency.

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(AP) - On the day he was sworn into office, President Rodrigo Duterte went to a Manila slum and exhorted residents who knew any drug addicts to "go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful."

Two months later, nearly 2,000 suspected drug pushers and users lay dead as morgues continue to fill up. Faced with criticism of his actions by rights activists, international bodies and outspoken Filipinos, including the top judge, Duterte has stuck to his guns and threatened to declare martial law if the Supreme Court meddles in his work.

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The US State Department's 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report says that addiction to shabu ( street name for methamphetamine or meth) is the most significant drug problem of the Philippines, with the narcotic continually growing as the most widely trafficked in the country.

A UN World Drug Report also tagged the Philippines as the country having the highest rate of shabu use in the whole of East Asia with even the Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) releasing a pastoral letter last year expressing concern about the proliferation of the drug problem in the country and the alleged involvement of government officials.

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Define Human Being, Duterte Tells Rights Groups

DAVAO CITY - Junkies are not humans.

That is how President Duterte sees drug users whose bodies are piling up as he presses his brutal war on drugs.

International human rights groups and the United Nations have raised concern about the killings, but Mr. Duterte, addressing soldiers at a military camp in his hometown Davao City on Friday night, said those groups should review their concept of human rights.

"These human rights (advocates) did not count those who were killed before I became President. The children who were raped and mutilated [by drug users]," he said.

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It was an "unacceptable" statement and he was sorry.

Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa yesterday apologized for his statements calling on addicts to burn down the houses of suspected drug lords.

Facing hundreds of drug surrenderees in Bacolod City on Thursday, Dela Rosa had urged them to burn the houses of drug lords or kill them.

"Pour gasoline over their houses then light them up. Show them that you are angry over that they did to you. They're enjoying (your) money, money that destroyed your brain. You know who the drug lords are. Would you like to kill them? Go ahead. Killing is allowed because (you) are the victim," Dela Rosa told the assembled drug surrenderees in Bacolod.

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The United States has not only made clear its concerns over extrajudicial killings in the Philippines but is discussing them "privately" with the Duterte administration, the US State Department said.

"I would say that we continue to engage with the government of the Philippines on our concerns privately, as well as from the podium, and raise those. It's hard for me to characterize how seriously they take that. We continue to raise it," State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said in a press briefing when asked about President Duterte's attacks against Sen. Leila de Lima in the same week Washington expressed concerns over drug-related killings in the Philippines.

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It is obvious that Duterte's reforms are being blocked by his enemies. Their objective is to blacken his image and make his campaign against drug lords difficult and frustrate government reform. They are not bothered that if the drug lords and their backers (politicians mostly) are not stopped the drugs will proliferate and the problem will be impossible to solve. It is a war between criminals and their victims. Before that happens Filipinos must stop them or it will go out of hand. I am reprinting here the post of BayanKo's adviser Jose Alejandrino which is now viralling in social media. We should not waste time with so-called congressional investigations from the very senators accused of protecting drug lords. Instead we should mobilize as we did in Duterte's Luneta rally to spare our country, the poor and especially the young, from the evil that confronts us.

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MORE THAN 1,800 deaths so far, and counting. That's the number provided by Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa himself at the Senate inquiry into the surge of extrajudicial killings since July 1, when President Duterte took office with a vow to rid this country of drugs and crime by whatever means.

How many of these deaths involved minors? The government numbers do not indicate that information. And so the death of Danica May Garcia will eventually be lumped along with the rest-one more negligible statistic in the administration's brutal war against the drug menace that it has declared as the country's No. 1 problem today.

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The latest casualty in the administration's "war" against drugs is tiny Danica May Garcia, all of five years old. Danica May, young Rowena Tiamson, 22; Jefferson Buhain, 20; Roman Clifford Manaois, 20, have all paid the ultimate price for an illegal drug trade that was allowed to prosper unabated by previous administrations.

These innocents have been categorized as "collateral damage." To dehumanize them so in the effort to play down the accountability of those responsible is really to watch them die twice.

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THE ONGOING orgy of extralegal drug killings has become quite alarming and a cause for serious concern. President Duterte takes pride in the seeming success of his war on drugs and is constantly prodding the Philippine National Police to accelerate the killings. In his first State of the Nation Address, President Duterte said in substance that we should not let human rights destroy our nation.

As a lawyer, I have always believed that human rights are what make us "human" and "civilized," the protection of which we should guard with vigilance. The summary execution of drug suspects without trial is akin to the slaughter of Indonesian "communists" during the time of President Suharto, which has been characterized as a "genocide."

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When Philippine National Police officials report with a hint of pride that some 1,800 people have been killed in the drug war within less than two months, and some senators say the figure is still small considering the number of drug "personalities" in the country, this nation has lost its soul.

President Duterte has amply shown that the drug menace is real and alarming in its scale. Whether the pervasiveness of the problem deserves those 1,800 deaths - more than half of which, the PNP stressed, were perpetrated by vigilantes - is debatable. But the debate at this point is lopsided and heavily in favor of the executioners. Many Filipinos seem to go along with Dirty Rody's Machiavellian belief about the end justifying the means.

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Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa prodded drug addicts "to kill drug lords and burn their houses for making them gaunt, toothless and addicted to shabu."

Dela Rosa stressed that drug lords have ruined their lives.

In contrast, he explained that drug lords do not use illegal drugs.

"They look good and get rich, enjoying the fruits of their illegal activities at the expense of drug addicts.

"You know who the drug lords are in your place. If you want to kill them, kill them. You can kill them because you are the victims, " Dela Rosa said in Filipino in a speech in Bacolod City.

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