During a Senate hearing on October 28, 2024, the Chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Richard Palpal-latoc, reported that the Philippine National Police (PNP) often refuses to cooperate with the CHR. The lack of access to police reports, especially in drug-related and extrajudicial killing cases, makes the CHR’s investigative work considerably more difficult.
The Duterte Information Act (Executive Order No. 2/EO2) of July 23, 2016, requires all executive branch agencies to be transparent and release documents and information to the public. According to Palpal-latoc, a list of exemptions (Memorandum Circular No. 15) to the EO2, dated March 17, 2023, prevents the CHR from accessing relevant PNP documents for their investigations. In addition, the police used a PNP memorandum dated July 28, 2017, to refuse CHR requests to produce documents. This approach impedes the CHR’s investigations into cases of human rights violations committed by government officials in the so-called “war on drugs.”
In that context, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Juanito Remulla, described the PNP as a “political organization” and urged reforms within the institution. The Senate investigation into human rights violations committed in the context of Ex-President Duterte’s “war on drugs” brought to light, among other things, a reward system for police officers, which is now being incorporated into the CHR’s investigations. To this end, a special task force was set up in the CHR to examine the statements from the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives on human rights violations in the “war on drugs” under Ex-President Duterte.
The problem of restricted access to police documents was already highlighted in a CHR report from 2022. This report emphasized that drug-related killings are often incompletely and incorrectly documented. Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized: “The police […] have proven that they cannot investigate themselves. Their internal processes are not only inadequate — they are defective and fundamentally flawed.” HRW also called for the establishment of an independent institution to tackle human rights problems, as the PNP was not in a position to do so. The CHR was highlighted as a relevant institution in this context.
According to data from the “Drug Archive Philippines” of the Ateneo de Manila University, almost 50 percent of the victims in the “war on drugs” between May 10, 2016, and September 29, 2017, were not high-ranking drug criminals, but minor suspects in the drug business. In addition, 80 percent of the victims come from the poorer strata of the population. The current documentation of the Dahas Project of the University of the Philippines shows that drug-related killings continue to take place with 347 cases between January and November 2024. Cebu is a hotspot region; most of the killings carried out by state security forces took place in the Davao del Sur region.
Photo © Raffy Lerma