The Commission on Human Rights has initiated an investigation into the death of a three-year-old girl who was caught in the crossfire and died during a police operation in Rizal on Sunday.
In a statement, CHR spokesman Jacqueline Ann de Guia said the rights body had sent a team to investigate the death of Myka Ulpina in an anti-drug operation in Rodriguez town.
Her father Renato Dolorfina and another companion were killed, along with undercover police officer Senior Master Sgt. Conrad Cabigao.
It’s an imperfect world and “shit happens”, Senator Ronald dela Rosa said as he defended the 20 policemen, including the chief of police of Rodriguez, Rizal, over the death of the girl, who allegedly was used by his father as a human shield during a buy-bust operation.
Calabarzon Regional Police Chief Edward Carranza said the police officers were relieved to “pave the way for an impartial investigation.”
The father of the three-year-old girl who died in the buy-bust operation was the one who fired first, according to a neighbor who witnessed the shootout.
In a report by Mariz Umali in GMA News TV’s State of the Nation with Jessica Soho on Wednesday, the witness, who requested anonymity, said a police officer was shot by the suspect.
Police said Dolorfina had used his daughter as a shield, but the child’s mother denied this and said they were sleeping when the incident happened.
“As there are disputes in the claims of both sides on what transpired that unfaithful day, the Commission is monitoring the case and already has dispatched a team to investigate. We ask the government to expedite the investigation on the matter and allow the rule of law to prevail,” De Guia said.
She condemned how Ulpina’s life “was cut short in the hands of those who swore to protect it.” The child was supposed to turn four at the end of this month.
The Philippine National Police has relieved the entire roster of the Rodriguez police force in light of the incident.
De Guia said minors caught in the crossfire in the drug war “are simply not collateral damage” but victims.
“Their hopes and dreams fall short once a bullet enter their bodies,” she said.
While supporting the government’s bid to end the drug scourge “we continue to echo the sentiment that the end does not justify the means.”
Human rights group In Defense of Human Rights and Dignity Movement, meanwhile, hit Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Albayalde’s statement that the death of police officers in drug operations proved how suspects had resisted arrest.
Albayalde cited the case of Cabigao, the officer slain in the same police operation where Ulpina was killed.
“iDEFEND laments the continuing loss of lives due to a bloody anti-drug war and reiterates its challenge to the government to adopt a health-based, rights-based, evidence-based approach to the drugs issue,” the group said.
It cited the lack of an “official and independent investigation” to determine whether the victims of extra-judicial killings were “real drug criminals,” if those slain in police operations indeed fought back, and if the reported police deaths were in legitimate police operations.
Human rights lawyer Chel Diokno, meanwhile, slammed Dela Rosa’s seemingly dismissive comment as he sent sympathies to her family.
“No, Senator Bato, this is not ‘shit happens.’ This is what happens when government dispenses justice from the barrels of guns instead of the courts,” Diokno said in a statement.
He warned that as long as guns ruled the drug war, more innocent children would die.
“Those responsible can never wash their guilt away. Their day of reckoning will come,” Diokno said.