Death toll in Philippines drug crackdown nears 6000 as shocking new photographs of street executions are published
THE death toll in the Philippines’ drug crackdown is about to hit 6000 and nobody is safe. WARNING: Graphic
WARNING: Graphic images
THEY are murdered in the street, in their own homes, in front of their own children.
Not even the rich, the famous or the politically connected are safe from The Punisher’s army of killers as they carry out what amounts to a state-sponsored massacre.
The death toll from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is about to hit the 6000 mark, just five months after he took office.
That figure, while shocking, is not even close to the target.
“You can expect 20,000 or 30,000 more,” Mr Duterte told reporters in October.
To the majority who voted for him, the 71-year-old is simply honouring his election promise to dump the bodies of “100,000 (drug dealers and users) in Manila Bay”.
However, comments Mr Duterte made this week may also have signed deaths warrants of the human rights activists campaigning against the brutal policy.
“The human rights (defenders) say I kill. If I say: ‘OK I’ll stop’. They (drug users) will multiply,” the president said on Monday.
“When harvest time comes, there will be more of them who will die. Then I will include you among them because you let them multiply.”
Amnesty International Philippines reacted immediately, expressing dismay at the potentially fatal implications for its members and others speaking out against the killings.
“This pronouncement is ... inciting hate towards anyone who expresses dissent on his war against drugs,” it said in a statement.
The National Alliance against Killings Philippines, a newly formed coalition of rights groups, said it took the threat very seriously and called on Mr Duterte to revoke it.
“His comment — that human rights is part of the drug problem and, as such, human rights advocates should be targeted too — can be interpreted as a declaration of an open season on human rights defenders,” the alliance said in a statement.
Father Atilano Fajardo of the archdiocese of Manila, who works with urban poor groups, said those seeking to protect the vulnerable would not be intimidated.
“This (threat) is a continuation of his effort to create a culture of fear, a culture of violence. We will not let this come to pass,” he told AFP.
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The radical leader insists he is not a killer, despite the country’s streets being littered with dead bodies due to his crackdown on illicit drugs.
Mr Duterte said he was not about to pull the plug on his operation, but would happily allow citizens to enjoy Christmas and New Year in peace if people stopped taking drugs.
According to the Philippine Inquirer’s Kill List, a total of 1775 people have been killed since Mr Duterte became president, including both victims of vigilante killings and suspects killed during police raids.
Rappler, on the other hand, puts the count much higher at close to 5930 since July 1, based on what it says was revised data from the Philippine National Police.
That figure has also been quoted by The New York Times and CNN, both of whom cite official police data.
According to the revised police data, 2086 victims have been killed in police operations and a further 3841 have died at the hands of mysterious vigilante groups.
“There is a new way of dying in the Philippines,” Tondo district Police Superintendant Redentor C. Ulsano told the Times, allegedly while smiling and holding his wrists together in front of him while pretending to be handcuffed.
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Mr Duterte has rejected accusations that he is a cold-blooded killer, despite the publication of hundreds of photographs showing city streets strewn with bodies, many of them children — the latest series appearing in a hard-hitting article by The New York Times.
Addressing the issue at an awards ceremony at the weekend, Mr Duterte said he took no pleasure from the killings, yet indicated that figure would get much, much higher.
“I know that people are killed. It does not make me happy,” he told the audience at the Outstanding Men and Women of 2016 awards.
He added that he found no satisfaction in ordering more weapons and bullets for the police, before revealing there were now an estimated four million drug addicts in the Philippines.
“That four million will contaminate another 10 million, then it will be too late for us to save the country. We will be like Latin America,” the Inquirer quoted him saying.
Since taking office, Mr Duterte has called on police and even civilians to kill drug users.
He has said he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts, and likened his campaign to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s efforts to exterminate Jews in Europe.
The former lawyer later apologised for his Hitler reference, but said he was “emphatic” about wanting to kill drug criminals.
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