VICE President Leni Robredo on Wednesday said that the Philippine National Police were detaining innocent people in a “palit-ulo” [exchange heads] scheme, substituting a relative for a missing drug personality as she criticized the “worsening” human rights abuses being committed under the name of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs.
But Malacañang said Robredo was “misled, misinformed and misguided” on the administration’s war on drugs.
Calling for an international scrutiny of the Duterte’s crackdown, Robredo, in a video message to a United Nations meeting on extrajudicial killings posted online, said if the police could not find a drug suspect, they would detain one of his or her relatives instead.
“They [communities] told us of the ‘palit-ulo’ scheme which means ‘exchange heads,’ where the wife, husband or relative in a so-called drug list will be taken if the person himself could not be found,” Robredo said in the video message that was released to reporters ahead of the scheduled screening at the UN gathering in Austria on Thursday.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Dr. Agnes Callamard branded the Philippines as “one of the worst places right now outside an armed conflict situation” following the thousands of killings as a result of Duterte’s war on drugs.
“The Philippines is standing out as one of the worst places right now outside an armed conflict situation because of the killings, but also because the human rights crisis is multifold,” Callamard said in a recent Bloomberg interview.
She slammed Duterte’s assertion that drug addicts, who were deemed useless to society, deserved to be killed.
“I’ve heard your president talk about ‘we need to kill people in order to protect the youth,’ but actually the people who are being killed right now are the youth. They are the poor people and they are young and if you want to protect them, don’t kill them. Offer them alternatives, offer them [something that will help them move] forward with their lives and with their dreams,” she said.
Robredo’s comments to the UN meeting were among her strongest criticisms on the President who sacked her last year over policy differences.
Robredo enumerated the human rights abuses allegedly being committed by authorities, mostly in the poverty-stricken areas in Metro Manila, amid the war on illegal drugs.
“Communities are rounded up in places like basketball courts, women separated from men, those with tattoos asked to stand in the corner, their belongings searched,” she said.
She said people were likewise being denied of their right to reasonable search.
“People are told that they do not have any right to demand search warrants as they are squatters and did not own the properties in which their houses are built,” she said.
Robredo said the bloody drug war had left Filipinos feeling “hopeless and helpless”, with the trust in the police eroded by the thousands of extra-judicial deaths.
“We are now looking at some grim statistics. Since July last year, more than 7,000 people have been killed in summary executions. We agree that our people deserve nothing less than a safe environment so that anyone can walk the streets safely whether in daylight and in night time.
“Some have told us that when there’s a crime, they normally go to the police. Now, they don’t know where to turn.
“Our people feel both hopeless and helpless: a state of mind that we must all take seriously.”
Robredo said the Philippines’ drug problem should not be treated as “one that can be solved with bullets alone,” saying it was foremost a public health issue.
She said the drug problem must be regarded as a complex public health issue linked to poverty and social inequality.
Duterte won the presidential elections last year after promising to eradicate illegal drugs in society with an unprecedented crackdown resulting in thousands of deaths.
Robredo, who belongs to a rival political party, has in recent months stepped up her criticism of the drug war and described those as “summary executions.”
“We are now looking at some very grim statistics: since July last year more than 7,000 people have been killed in summary executions,” Robredo said.
While Duterte has repeatedly railed against international human rights groups and other foreign critics of his drug war, Robredo invited more scrutiny.
“To know that the international community’s eyes are on us and to feel that human rights advocates are watching over our country gives us comfort, courage and hope,” she said. With AFP