AFTER years of putting its files in secrecy, the Philippine National Police announced it would grant the Department of Justice access to 61 records of investigations against policemen in anti-drug operations — a number representing less than one percent of 7,884 deaths reported by the PNP in its operations since 2016. DOJ’s previous review covered only 328 cases which “were made available for review.” In more than half of the records reviewed, the DOJ said that policemen did not follow protocols.
Investigation on cases of killings in police anti-drug operations should have been done long ago if the PNP is genuinely committed to accountability among its ranks. Opening 61 cases out of thousands is too little. The investigations are already too late. The PNP should’ve not even allowed the death toll in the brutal drug war to reach thousands just to launch an investigation. Any investigation now won’t bring back the lives claimed by the government’s murderous campaign, and by the looks of it, the carnage will continue especially through measures reimposing death penalty for drug offenses.
House Bill No. 7814 was passed by the House of Representatives on its third and final reading on March 2, 2021. The bill proposes an amendment stating that “[u]nless proven otherwise, a person found or is present in the immediate vicinity of the area of sale, trading, marketing, dispensation, delivery or distribution, is presumed to have been involved in the sale, trade, or distribution of dangerous drugs, controlled precursors or essential chemicals.”
Death is the maximum penalty stated in the bill, but capital punishment has not been reimposed in the country. During the Senate committee hearings on House Bill No. 7814 last Tuesday, May 25, Sen. Bato dela Rosa reiterated his proposal to impose death penalty for drug offenses. President Duterte, in his fifth State of the Nation Address July 27 last year, called on Congress for the swift passage of a law reimposing death penalty through lethal injection for drug offenses.
Not only do the proposed amendments violate the constitutional right to presumption of innocence — which has been brazenly violated in drug war operations — death as a penalty also deliberately violates international human rights instruments and the Philippine government’s international human rights obligations in the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Philippines ratified in 2007.
We strongly fear that they’re only set to facilitate a bloodier and more insidious campaign of mass murder with a legislative fiat.
