PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday ordered the Philippine National Police to rejoin the government’s war on drugs and asked for “just another year” to finish the problem.
“I hope to finish the [drug] problem. Maybe give me just another year,” Duterte said during the oathtaking of presidential appointees and officers from private organizations.
“The police will be back,” he said, referring to a memorandum order reassigning the PNP to assist in the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in the war on drugs.
He joked that human rights organizations that have been critical about his drug war should take a drug of their own, Valium.
“Let’s buy these human rights people some medicine to calm them down,” he said in Filipino. “Valium. Let them take it and put them to sleep,” he added.
In his Memorandum Order No. 17, Duterte directed the PNP “to resume providing active support” to the PDEA, which still remains as the overall lead agency in the campaign against illegal drugs.
Aside from the PNP, other law enforcement agencies, including the National Bureau of Investigation, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Bureau of Customs, Philippine Postal Corp., will resume providing active support to the PDEA, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said.
A human rights group said the government’s failure to hold anyone accountable for the killings in its anti-drug war make it “highly unlikely” that the PDEA will be able to restrain well-documented police abuses.
“Those failures highlight the need for United Nations action to investigate these killings, and end the murderous police operations on urban poor communities,” said Phelim Kine, deputy director, Asia Division, of Human Rights Watch.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government on Wednesday urged the public to report any police abuse, now that the PNP has rejoined the war on drugs.
Also on Wednesday, PDEA director-general Aaron Aquino said hotels in Metro Manila are now being used as choice venues for drug use and transactions.
He noted a string of buy-bust operations and implementation of search warrants in several upscale hotels in Metro Manila caught pushers and users in the act of selling and using shabu and ecstasy.
“Illegal drug transactions are actually happening inside hotel rooms because illegal drugs can be exchanged discreetly. Also, organized parties spiked with drugs take place inside these establishments because detection risk is less,” he said.
A leftist group, meanwhile, hit the PNP for offering its “Know Your Rights” application as a “perfect example of hypocrisy.”
“It doesn’t matter how many online apps the PNP intends to launch on human rights, nor how many copies of human rights manuals they disseminate. These cannot erase the irrefutable fact that offline and on the ground, they are among the foremost rights violators in the country,” said Cristina Palabay, Karapatan secretary-general. With Bill Casas, PNA