AT least 4,075 drug suspects have been killed by authorities in the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, according to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
From July 1, 2016 to March 20 this year, PDEA’s records showed the 180,000-strong Philippine National Police carried out a high incidence of killings in the anti-drug operations.
The figure recorded an increase of 107 deaths on Dec. 5, 2017, or when the PNP regained the lead of the drug war after a two-month respite.
Detractors, including international human rights advocates, hit Presiddent Rodrigo Duterte for the deaths of suspected drug pushers, traders and users.
Last year, Duterte ordered the PNP to back off from the anti-drug campaign over the death of South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo inside Camp Crame, and the killings of teenagers Kian Loyd delos Santos and Carl Arnaiz in Caloocan City.
From Dec. 5 up to March 20, only one drug suspect died every day.
According to PDEA, drug-related killings beyond PNP and PDEA operations reached 2,467 from July 2016 until March this year, of which 1,752 were deaths under investigation and 715 were considered “solved.”
As of March 2018, the Duterte administration had confiscated 2,620.5 kilos of shabu worth P13.46 billion and arrested 123,648 drug suspects, 469 of whom were government employees.
Meanwhile, at the “War on Drugs: Looking Behind the Numbers” forum, the Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center lamented that “in the war on drugs now, children died [along] with due process.”
“They are no longer collateral damage, they are seen as targets,” CLRDC representative Rowena Legaspi said.
Some 54 children were killed in the war against drugs in the first year of Duterte’s presidency, and that the government had not extended any help to the bereaved families for their burial.
But the human rights groups estimated at least 12,000 had died from vigilante and drug war operations.
