{"id":8895,"date":"2023-12-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=8895"},"modified":"2023-11-30T18:09:23","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T17:09:23","slug":"anti-drug-campaign-is-bloodless-says-house-representative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/anti-drug-campaign-is-bloodless-says-house-representative\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-drug campaign is bloodless says House Representative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though it seems that the Philippine government’s anti-drug campaign under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has lost media attention, killings continue to take place – even in the context of anti-drug-operations by state security forces. This is emphasized by the documentation of drug-related killings by the DAHAS project of the University of the Philippines: On November 21, 2023, DAHAS reported 472<\/a> drug-related killings since President Marcos took office on June 30, 2022. The majority<\/a> of those killings were committed by state security forces, especially in Davao City, which is currently led by Paolo Duterte.<\/p>\n

However, DAHAS’ statistics contradict the recent statement of House Rep. Robert Ace Barbers. In a meeting of the Philippine House of Representatives’ Committee on Dangerous Drugs on October 9, 2023, Barbers described<\/a> the government’s anti-drug campaign as “bloodless.” House Rep. Janette Garin supported Barbers’ controversial declaration a week later in a statement on October 15, 2023, in which she described<\/a> President Marcos’ drug policy as efficient and humane.<\/p>\n

The Director General of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Moro Virgilio Lazoalso presented<\/a> current statistics at the meeting on October 9, 2023, and emphasized that the number of drug-related killings in PDEA operations had fallen by 52%. According to the PDEA, the number of deaths fell<\/a> from 40 in 2020-2021 to 19 between July 2022 and September 2023. The fact<\/a> that killings continue to take place was not addressed in the meeting, nor were any other current statistics on drug-related killings in the context of operations by the national police or other government agencies asked about.<\/p>\n

As early as October 2022, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief General Rodolfo Azurin Jr. announced<\/a> that there no killings occurred in police operations as part of the government’s anti-drug campaign. In February 2023, when Azurin spoke<\/a> of only four killings in drug-related police operations in the month of January 2023, DAHAS documented<\/a> 20 drug-related killings for the same period.<\/p>\n

Following a Freedom of Information request<\/a> by online news outlet Rappler, the PNP acknowledged that there were seven killings in drug-related police operations between June 2022 and April 2023. However, DAHAS<\/a>‘ documentation already recorded over 100 drug-related killings for the same period.<\/p>\n

President Marcos’ political will to actually put an end to the law enforcement approach of the anti-drugs campaign remains weak, considering the police circular<\/a> that operationalized<\/a> Ex-President Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs” is still<\/a> in place and drug-related killings continue at a steady rate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though it seems that the Philippine government’s anti-drug campaign under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has lost media attention, killings continue to take place – even in the context of anti-drug-operations by state security forces. This is emphasized by the documentation of drug-related killings by the DAHAS project of the University of the Philippines: On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,58,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-on-drugs-en","category-human-rights-news","category-internal-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8895"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8925,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895\/revisions\/8925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}