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| Nanette Castillo grieves over the dead body of her son Aldrin, an alleged drug user killed by unidentified assailants in Manila in this 2017 photo. (Photo from AFP) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] MANILA—“I would rather intimidate and strike fear in the hearts of criminals. If it involves human rights, I don’t give a shit.” This was what, according to a report by Washington Post, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said about his campaign against drugs and crimes in an interview with international news network Al Jazeera, PH Inquirer reported.
It was October 2016 as Duterte was just warming his seat as president. Nearly five years after the former mayor of Davao City uttered those words, his national police and other security officials would say that Duterte’s iron-handed handling of crimes and drugs had been effective. But there seems to be something amiss with what appears to be a bloodthirsty strategy to fight criminality and the drug trade. A closer look showed there are two basic ways thousands of drug and crime suspects are getting killed—the first is through supposedly legitimate police operations and the second is through street executions by motorcycle-riding assassins.
Search warrants had become the legal tool of most police raids that end in the killing of suspects inside their homes. It’s not clear what led to the killings but the official narrative is suspects fighting back. Suspects who get killed in these operations, by logic, violently reject a search of their homes.
