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THE use of violence in dealing with crimes and drugs is not prohibited so long as there is a necessity and “proportionality,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said Sunday.
Roque, a former human rights lawyer, said he and President Rodrigo Dutere shared the save view.
Last week, Duterte also named Roque as his adviser on human rights issues.
“He believes the police will be blamed even when what they do is right. If somebody dies, this is the result of a lawful engagement,” Roque said in Filipino in an interview on radio dzBB.
“The President is doing the right thing. That is called the correct human rights standards. Violence is not prohibited, as long as there is a necessity and there is proportionality,” he added.
Duterte has come under fire from local and international rights groups over his bloody war on drugs, which has killed thousands of drug suspects.
At the same time, Roque said the President has not made up his mind to restore the Philippine National Police role in the drug war.
Under intense criticism for the questionable shooting deaths of several minors last month, the President removed the PNP from his war on drugs and put the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in charge instead.
“Just the other night, he said he was still thinking about it,” Roque said.
“Tomorrow, I will see the President when we go to Sultan Kudarat. One of the things we might talk about on the flight there is what will happen to the war on drugs,” Roque said.
Roque said attacks on the proposal to bring back the PNP were “premature and baseless.”
Administration critic Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, however, said the transfer of authority for the drug war to the PDEA last October was merely a ruse to appease the public outrage over several high-profile killings in August and September.
Trillanes said Duterte’s war on drugs was never about eradicating illegal drugs. Instead, he said it is Duterte’s instrument to sow terror and fear in the hearts of his own people so they would praise and worship him or at least won’t criticize or oppose him.
“That is what a narcissistic tyrant like him longs for,” Trillanes said.
Another opposition senator, Risa Hontiveros said the transfer back to the PNP was not only ill-advised, but a real danger to the public and the greater goal of true peace and order.
Hontiveros said returning the anti-drug campaign to an unreformed PNP is a slide back into the nightmare of Tokhang and the horrors of extrajudicial killings.
“It opens up the dangerous possibility of another Kian delos Santos, of hundreds if not thousands more dead, and the further loss of trust of the public in our police force. This is especially relevant given that the police officers involved in the death of Kian delos Santos were found to have killed him deliberately, and the recent discovery that elements of the PNP are providing security services to big-time drug personalities,” also said Hontiveros.
She said the government’s anti-drug campaign under the PDEA is making significant strides. From July to November of this year, the PDEA has arrested a total of 117,268 drug suspects and conducted 78,619 anti-drug operations in which some 2,525.77 kilos of shabu worth P18.9 billion were seized. This includes a raid by the PDEA near the Malacañang compound seizing P 15 million worth of illegal drugs.
“I suspect that President Duterte does not want the PDEA’s alternative anti-drug approach, which is less bloody and more observant of the rule of law and human rights, to succeed. PDEA’s alternative approach is already shaming the President’s abusive and inefficient Oplan Tokhang and teaching the public that there is a better way to address the country’s drug problem,” Hontiveros added.
