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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Pushups all for show’

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SENATOR Francis Escudero blasted Philippine National Police chief Dir. Gen. Ronald dela Rosa Thursday for cursing at Angeles City policemen accused of robbing and extorting Korean tourists, and making them do pushups, saying this was all for show.

“It’s clear—it’s just for camera and TV,” Escudero said after Dela Rosa made the erring policemen do pushups in front of members of the media.

The same, he said, could be said of Dela Rosa’s statement that he wanted “to melt in shame” following revelations that policemen abducted and strangled South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo and extorted P5 million from his wife, who did not know he was dead.

“You think you’re so tough picking on the Koreans, you sons of bitches,” Dela Rosa told the policemen in Filipino. “You want me to kick you? The next time another case like this comes up, you’re the ones I will punish.”

The seven policemen allegedly robbed and extorted Koreans in Pampanga in December last year, arresting three of them and extorting cash from them.

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Escudero asked why Dela Rosa did not ask the policemen accused of killing Jee to do pushups as well.

File photo

Senator Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the committee on public order and dangerous drugs, has started an investigation into Jee’s abduction and murder. 

Although PNP leadership’s commitment to rid the police force is a welcome move, Escudero said it should have been done before the government’s war on drugs was launched. 

The senator also questioned why the campaign against illegal drugs only targeted the poor. 

He said President Rodrigo Duterte should release the list of big-time drug lords to shame them at least. 

Escudero added that he would file a resolution next week asking the Senate to look into the report released by Amnesty International that alleged PNP officers have paid others to kill thousands of drug suspects.

In the report, Amnesty International said the police had “systematically targeted mostly poor and defenseless people across the country while planting ‘evidence’ recruiting paid killers, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports.”

He also wanted Amnesty International to explain its findings and present their sources at the legislative inquiry. 

“We want the AI to explain the basis for their report and secondly, the police they mentioned and whoever wanted to come out with evidence regarding this issue,” said Escudero.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday said a government plan to use military personnel in anti-drug operations “heightens the risk of excessive force and inappropriate military tactics.”

Phelim Kine, deputy director, Asia Division of HRW, said there is also a deeply rooted culture of impunity for military abuses in the Philippines.

“Send in the troops. That’s Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s follow-up to the announced pause earlier this week for a pause in the Philippine National Police’s ‘drug war’ following revelations this month of the brutal killing of a South Korean businessman by alleged anti-drug police,” said Kine.

On Tuesday, Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to take a frontline role in the anti-drug campaign in which more than 7,000 Filipinos have been killed, Kine said.

Duterte said the deployment was necessary to fill the gap created by the suspended police operations.

National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon confirmed that the government had approved the assignment of military units to “arrest drug personalities” in cooperation with the official anti-narcotics agency.

Kine said data from the Department of National Defense indicate only one soldier has been convicted of an extrajudicial killing since 2001. 

Kine said the arrest in August 2014 of Jovito Palparan, a retired Army major general, marked a rare challenge to the impunity enjoyed by military personnel who commit serious crimes, and which multiple presidential administrations have failed to adequately address.

“Military units in the Philippines have a long history of masking extrajudicial killings of suspected leftists and communist New People’s Army rebels as ‘legitimate encounters’,” said Kine.

He said such methods have sinister parallels with police anti-drug operations.

Police have reported killing 2,551 suspected drug users and dealers in the past seven months. 

Police have attributed those killings to suspects who “resisted arrest and shot at police officers,” but have not provided further evidence that police acted in self-defense. 

The police have failed to investigate or prosecute any personnel responsible for those deaths despite compelling evidence that some police units are summarily gunning down suspects, Kine said.

Duterte on Thursday said he has lost faith in the PNP and the NBI following the Jee case.

Duterte described the prevailing corruption within the ranks of the police and other law enforcement agencies as a “virus” that needed a “massive cleansing.” With F. Pearl A. Gajunera and John Paolo Bencito

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