The highest-profile critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war was arrested yesterday on charges she said were meant to silence her, but she vowed to keep fighting the “sociopathic serial killer.”
Speaking to journalists minutes before armed police in flak jackets detained her, Philippine Senator Leila de Lima insisted she was innocent of the drug-trafficking charges that could see her jailed for life.
“It is my honor to be imprisoned for the things I am fighting for. Please pray for me,” De Lima, 57, said outside her office where she had sought temporary refuge overnight after an arrest warrant was issued on Thursday. “They will not be able to silence me, and stop me from fighting for the truth and justice, and against the daily killings and repression by the Duterte regime.”
De Lima also recorded a polemical video just before her arrest as she called for the Philippine people to show courage and oppose Duterte’s drug war, which has seen more than 6,500 people killed since he took office eight months ago.
“There is no doubt that our president is a murderer and a sociopathic serial killer,” she said in the 10-minute video posted on Facebook.
De Lima, a former human rights commissioner, also said her arrest was an act of revenge for her decade-long efforts to expose Duterte as the leader of death squads during his time as mayor of Davao City.
Duterte in August last year first raised the allegations that De Lima had been running a drug-trafficking ring with criminals inside the nation’s biggest prison when she was the Philippine secretary of justice in the previous government.
“I will have to destroy her in public,” Duterte said then as he began a campaign to tarnish her reputation, including by making unsubstantiated allegations about her sex life. “De Lima is not only screwing her driver, she is also screwing the nation.”
De Lima was last week charged with three counts of drug trafficking.
She and her supporters said that Duterte orchestrated the charges not just to crush her opposition, but also to intimidate anyone else who might want to speak out against the president or his drug war.
“People are afraid,” Robert Reyes, a priest who spent the night at the Senate with De Lima and other supporters, said after her arrest. “If the government can arrest a powerful person like her, what more the little man? That is the implied message of her arrest.”
Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, a member of De Lima’s opposition Liberal Party and elected separately from Duterte, described the arrest as “political harassment.”
Amnesty International said on Thursday that it would regard De Lima as a prisoner of conscience.
“The arrest of De Lima is a blatant attempt by the Philippine government to silence criticism of President Duterte and divert attention away from serious human rights violations in the ‘war on drugs,’” Amnesty said.
Duterte’s aides insisted they had a strong case against De Lima and said her arrest showed even the most powerful people would be brought to justice if they broke the law.
“The war on illegal drugs targets all who are involved and the arrest of an incumbent senator demonstrates the president’s strong resolve to fight pushers, peddlers and their protectors,” Philippine presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said.
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