At least 26 people died overnight in police operations in the Philippine capital of Manila, police said yesterday, a second night of heavy bloodshed this week in an intensification of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s fierce war on drugs and crime.
The killings in Manila followed 32 deaths in near-simultaneous police raids on Monday night in Bulacan province, which borders the capital.
Together, they mark the deadliest period of a drug-focused crackdown that has killed thousands of Filipinos, and caused international alarm, since Duterte took office more than a year ago.
Manila police spokesman Colonel Erwin Margarejo described the raids that started late in Wednesday in Manila as “one-time, big-time” operations, the same term used by police in Bulacan, who said the victims died because they chose to put up a fight.
“This is ‘one-time, big-time’ operations, so it is not focused only on drugs, we are operating also against other street crimes, like robbery, but these people could also be under the influence of drugs,” Margarejo said.
“If they resisted violently, our police have to defend themselves,” he said.
Duterte unleashed his crackdown the day he took office on June 30 last year after a convincing win in an election in which he campaigned heavily on a promise to use deadly force to wipe out crime and drugs.
It was not immediately clear what was behind the step-up in the number of coordinated police operations this week, but Duterte gave a clear indication on Wednesday that it had his blessing.
He said it was good that 32 criminals had been killed in Bulacan.
“Let’s kill another 32 every day. Maybe we can reduce what ails this country,” he said.
Duterte also chided human rights groups for getting in the way of his anti-drugs campaign and said police should shoot them if they obstructed justice, a remark the New York-based Human Rights Watch said puts rights advocates “in grave danger.”
Its deputy Asia director, Phelim Kine, described the comments as “like painting a target on the backs of courageous people working to protect the rights and upholding the dignity of all Filipinos.”
The exact number of people killed during the war on drugs is difficult to quantify, with no independent statistics available and police providing comprehensive data only for deaths during anti-drugs operations, where official accounts typically say suspects resisted arrest.
From the start of the drugs war to the end of last month, Philippine police said more than 3,400 people were killed in their operations.
Police said about 2,100 deaths among about 13,500 murders over the same period were drug-related, attributed to turf wars, informants being silenced, or vigilantes killing drug users.
A total of 65 police officers have been killed on the job during the period.
Critics say that members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) are executing suspects and say it is likely they have a hand in thousands of unsolved murders of drug users by mysterious vigilantes.
The PNP and government reject that.
Although the violence has been criticized by much of the international community, Filipinos largely support the campaign and domestic opposition to it has been muted.
Several Philippine Senate hearings into allegations that Duterte operated a death squad when he was a city mayor and was now using the same approach on a national scale have been inconclusive, while an impeachment complaint filed earlier this year was dismissed by Philippine Congress.
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