A former police general who oversaw the bloodiest years of the Philippines deadly campaign against drugs shrugged off the killing of a three-year-old girl by police in a sting operation, on Thursday saying that the world was not perfect and “shit happens.”
Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who once led the crackdown that has killed thousands of mostly poor urban drug users and peddlers, said that “collateral damage” was inevitable, referring to Sunday’s killing of toddler Myka Ulpina in a province near Manila.
Police said that she was used as a human shield by her father, a suspected drug dealer who resisted arrest and opened fire.
The girl’s mother has rejected that version of events.
“We are living in an imperfect world,” Dela Rosa told a news conference. “Would a police officer want to shoot a child? Never, because they have children as well, but shit happens during operations.”
Separately on Thursday, activists said that more than two dozen countries formally called for a UN investigation into Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown.
Their draft resolution marks the first time that the UN Human Rights Council has been asked to address what 11 UN rights experts last month said was “a staggering number of unlawful deaths and police killings,” which the government had shown no interest in investigating.
Duterte’s spokesman had called that “outrageous interference” by “foreign propagandists.”
Duterte’s critics have said that his three-year campaign has been a failure, intended to create shock and fear and burnish his tough image without making a dent on big narcotics syndicates.
Allegations of police cover-ups, summary executions and the planting of drugs and guns have been widespread.
Police have rejected the allegations and said that all of the more than 6,000 people they say they have killed were all armed and had all resisted arrest during official, sanctioned operations.
Activists have said that the drug-related killings could be closer to 27,000.
Philippine National Police spokesman Bernard Banac said that officers involved in the child’s killing were suspended pending an impartial investigation to determine which firearm killed her.
He reiterated the police version that the girl’s father pulled a gun first.
“It cannot be helped if there was an accident ... if he used his daughter as a human shield,” he said.
Lawyers and activists slammed Dela Rosa and said that a day of reckoning would come for police who killed illegally.
“This is not ‘shit happens.’ This happens when gov’t dispenses justice from guns instead of courts,” Jose Manuel Diokno, a lawyer who has mounted legal challenges to Duterte’s crackdown, said on Twitter.
Carlos Conde, Philippines researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said that Dela Rosa had shown “an uncaring, even contemptuous attitude” toward the child’s killing.
“Dela Rosa should be reminded that he, too, will answer for his complicity in the slaughter of thousands,” Conde said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the