CLARIFICATION
A House leader clarified that while lawmakers during the Duterte administration supported war on illegal drugs, they did not intend to allocate funds for extra judicial killings.
Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr., one of the chairpersons of the House Quad Committee, said that while the past Congress supported former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs by passing the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA) to finance the anti-drug campaign, no funds were specifically allocated for the murder of innocent, poor Filipinos.
Abante has expressed sadness over the killing of more than 20,000 suspected, often innocent drug users and street pushers, on the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) of Duterte’s government.
“The objective of this campaign was to end the threat posed by illegal drugs, not to cut short the lives of innocent men, women, and children,” Abante said.
“The bloody drug war implemented during the Duterte administration, as explained by one of our colleagues, did not solve the drug problem. In fact, it worsened it, creating more harm than good by orphaning thousands of children who lost their parents, often the family breadwinners, on mere suspicion of involvement in drugs,” he added.
The lawmaker lamented that “the victimized families, left fatherless by Oplan Tokhang and Oplan Double Barrel, are now even poorer five to ten years later.
With no support from their slain breadwinners, these children and relatives struggle to get a proper education, and as a result end up as street children who often get involved in petty crimes due to their poverty. Instead of solving the problem, the previous administration exacerbated it.”
Abante recognized that there were quarters that did not speak out earlier against past administration’s bloody drug war, and explained that this may have been due to the action taken by the Duterte administration against those who publicly opposed its campaign against illegal drugs.
“Media outlets were silenced, and those who opposed the drug war—such as lawyers, judges, and politicians—were implicated in illegal drugs. Their names were unjustifiably included in publicized drug lists, and they were later murdered because of it––with no thorough police investigation following their deaths,” Abante said.
“Worse, some law enforcers, particularly from the PNP, competed over who to kill, regardless of whether the targets were legitimate or not, all for the lure of substantial monetary rewards,” he added.
Abante explained that “it is on record, documented in the media, that Duterte emboldened the police to commit abuses and murders, by saying ‘kill them, and I’ll take care of you.
He also also pointed out that Oplan Tokhang and Oplan Double Barrel failed to touch or prosecute suspected big-time drug lords, such as Michael Yang, as well as two brothers exposed by police anti-drug officer Col. Eduardo Acierto.