Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief General Rodolfo Azurin yesterday said that killings in anti-drugs operations would be minimized, with the new government focused on rehabilitation and education, in contrast to the previous administration’s crackdown.
“As much as possible, we wanted a bloodless campaign,” Azurin told foreign correspondents in a virtual forum.
While there are instances where law enforcers would have to defend themselves to ensure their safety, “we avoid killing of suspects,” he said.
The previous government’s drugs war policies were being reviewed to determine if they were still relevant and to see if “certain adjustments” need to be made to make sure they remain effective and efficient, he said.
Among those under review is the so-called “Tokhang” operations that have become notorious for their deadly outcomes.
Rights activists say in many of the operations, suspects were not given a chance to give up and were instead executed in cold blood.
Police reject that and typically say the victims were killed because they violently resisted arrest.
More than 6,200 people have been killed in the war on drugs during former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year rule.
The “Tokhang” approach, where police visit homes of users and dealers and seek their surrender, while still existing, will “not be as intensive,” Azurin said.
Since the start of the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s term, 46 drug suspects have been killed in 18,000 anti-drug operations that have resulted in 22,000 arrests and seizure of 9.7 billion Philippine pesos (US$169.6 million) of narcotics, Azurin said.
“The PNP wanted to minimize, as much as possible, the killings of people involved or engaged in drug activities,” Azurin said.
Despite Marcos’ softer approach to addressing the drug menace, he has ruled out the Philippines rejoining the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor plans to resume an investigation into Duterte’s war on drugs, to the dismay of rights campaigners.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of