Two things catch the eye in the office of Joselito Esquivel, a police colonel enforcing a national crackdown on drugs in the Philippines’ most crime-ridden district: a pair of boxing gloves in a display cabinet and an M4 assault rifle lying beside him.
“It’s all-out war,” the Quezon City officer said of a spike in killings of suspected drug dealers by police across the country since last month’s election of Rodrigo Duterte, a tough-talking city mayor, as the country’s president. “Duterte has already given the impetus for this massive operation.”
Duterte has vowed to wipe out drug crime within six months, but Philippines Commission on Human Rights chairperson Jose Luis Chito Gascon said the aggressive rhetoric behind his promises has already instilled a sense of impunity among police.
Photo: Reuters
“Basically, you have Mr Duterte saying: ‘It’s OK, I’ve got your back,’” Gascon said.
On average, at least one person has been shot dead by police or anonymous vigilantes every day since the May 9 election that swept Duterte to power, an escalation from the first four months of the year when the rate was about two a week.
Handwritten warning signs have been left on some corpses.
Duterte, who is to be inaugurated today for a six-year term, has cheered police on: after a druglord was killed in a northern province recently, he traveled there to congratulate them and hand over a reward worth about US$6,000.
Critics, including leaders of the influential Roman Catholic church and human rights advocates, fear a spiral of violence could lie ahead for the Philippines if vigilantism and summary executions become an accepted norm after Duterte takes office.
“My concern is that instead of law and order, what we will see is lawlessness and fear,” Gascon said. “What will result is an increase in the body-bag count.”
On Monday, Duterte branded as “stupid” human rights groups and lawmakers who have complained about his draconian plans to crush crime and reintroduce the death penalty.
“When you kill someone, rape, you should die,” he told his last public meeting as mayor of Davao City, where death squads have killed hundreds of drug-pushers, petty criminals and even street children since 1998, according to rights groups.
Duterte denies any involvement in the vigilante killings.
A political outsider whose coarse defiance of the traditional ruling class has drawn comparisons with US Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, Duterte has even figured in commentaries on Britain’s vote to leave the EU as an example of a global trend toward populism triumphing over the establishment.
Duterte’s pick to be the country’s police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, said that some recent killings might have been carried out by officers involved in the drugs business who were covering their tracks so that the new president does not go after them.
“That could be true,” he told reporters. “Some police officers are shifting from drug protectors to drug punishers.”
However, Dela Rosa added that so much work toward wiping out drug crime has been accomplished recently that his job would be easy when he takes over at the end of this week.
Railing against critics, he said most of the victims in the recent wave of killings were shot by police in self-defense.
“I have no problem how many people die in legitimate police operations, the police have a right to defend themselves,” he said. “We are police officers, we are not hard killers.”
Only two of the about 60 recent killings took place in Quezon City, a crowded and gritty part of sprawling Metro Manila that has the country’s highest crime rate. Most were in areas outside the capital that are less intensively policed.
Esquivel said his force has also adopted a softer tack by inviting drug peddlers and addicts to surrender and go into rehabilitation. Just last week, more than 1,000 gave themselves up there, he said.
Despite that gentler approach, police in the Philippines are open about their readiness to use guns.
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