Police killed at least 13 people in Manila on the third night of an escalation in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s ruthless war on drugs and crime, taking the toll for one of the bloodiest weeks so far to 80, witnesses and media reported yesterday.
Earlier this week, 67 people were gunned down and more than 200 arrested in Manila and provinces adjoining the Philippine capital, in what police described as a “one-time, big-time” push to curb drugs and street crimes.
The term has been used by Philippine police to describe a coordinated anti-crime drive in crime-prone districts, usually slums or low-income neighborhoods, often with additional police deployed.
The killings drew condemnation from Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, who belongs to a party opposed to Duterte.
Branding it “something to be outraged about,” she has been a constant critic of the crackdown that has killed thousands of Filipinos and caused international alarm since Duterte took office more than a year ago.
A team of journalists on Thursday night went to five communities in Manila, where four men died in shootouts with undercover police in drug “buy-bust” or sting operations.
Police prevented the journalists from getting near the scene in the northwestern neighborhood of Caloocan, but the reporters saw three body bags being taken from a maze of narrow alleys.
Elsewhere in Caloocan, they saw the corpse of a man slumped on an iron fence at the back of a mini-bus terminal.
Another man was killed near the Manila post office building, four died in hospitals in the northern area of Malabon and another died on the spot near a former garbage dump in the sprawling Quezon City district.
Three others were killed elsewhere on Thursday night, according to a radio report, including a man who was shot by masked men on a motorcycle in the eastern area of Marikina City.
“The killing spree must stop even as we also demand a stop to the proliferation of illegal drugs,” Renato Reyes, secretary-general of the left-wing Bayan (“Nation”) movement, said. “A long-term and thorough solution is necessary. A fascist solution is doomed to fail.”
Reyes urged Filipinos to join a protest organized by a group of artists in Quezon City, saying in a flyer on social media: “Let us condemn the recent spike in the killings under the Duterte regime.”
Police say there has been no instruction from higher authorities to step up their anti-drug operations and they are only doing their job.
“The president did not instruct me to kill and kill,” national police chief Ronald dela Rosa said on Thursday. “I also don’t have any instructions to my men to kill and kill, but the instruction coming from the president is very clear that our war on drugs is unrelenting. Those who were killed fought back.”
Duterte this week said it was good that 32 criminals had been killed in a province north of Manila, adding: “Let’s kill another 32 every day. Maybe we can reduce what ails this country.”
On Thursday, he said he would not just pardon police officers who killed drug offenders during the anti-narcotics campaign, but also promote them.
Critics maintain that members of the Philippine National Police are executing suspects and say it is likely they have a hand in thousands of unsolved murders of drug users by mysterious vigilantes.
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