TED ALJIBE / AFP
(Eagle News) — Amnesty International has revealed incidents where policemen in the Philippines pay officers and assassins to kill drug suspects, plant evidence and even set up an alleged racket with funeral homes who pay for each dead body sent to them.
The international rights group investigated 33 incidents of drug-related killings in 20 cities and towns across the Philippines in which 59 people were killed, mostly poor people.
The Amnesty report, which followed an in-depth investigation into the drug war, also outlined what it said were other widespread police crimes aside from extrajudicial killings that mainly targeted the poor.
The AI report was titled, “If you are poor you are killed”: Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines’ “War on Drugs.”
In its report detailing the results of its investigation released on Wednesday, February 1, Amnesty said that the “vast majority of these killings appear to have been extrajudicial executions – that is, unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by government order or with its complicity or acquiescence.”
It said that the drug-related killings were “systematic, planned and organized”
“Under President Duterte’s rule, the national police are breaking laws they are supposed to uphold while profiting from the murder of impoverished people. The same streets Duterte vowed to rid of crime are now filled with bodies of people illegally killed by his own police,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s crisis response director.
“This is not a war on drugs, but a war on the poor. Often on the flimsiest of evidence, people accused of using or selling drugs are being killed for cash in an economy of murder,” Hassan said.
The investigation of the London-based rights group was supposedly done last November and December and was completed in January, and its report included witness accounts of victims who were alleged shot dead although they had shouted that they would surrender.
The rights group said it interviewed 110 people.
Amnesty’s researcher also spoke to at least two persons who are said to be paid killers. They allegedly take orders from a police officer who paid them 5,000 pesos for each drug user killed. The police officer also pays 10,000 to 15,000 pesos for every suspected drug dealer killed.
A senior police officer who has served in the force for a decade and conducts operations as part of an anti-illegal drugs unit in Metro Manila described to Amnesty how the police are also paid, between 8,000 pesos and 15,000 pesos, per “encounter.”
“We always get paid by the encounter. That’s the word we use, ‘encounter.’ The amount ranges from P8,000 to P15,000,” the officer said.
“The one we really go after are pushers. There are categories (of pushers)—different levels based on their notoriety. Higher levels are paid more,” he said.
“The PNP incentive isn’t announced. We’re paid in cash, secretly, by headquarters. The payment is (split by) the unit. There’s no incentive for arresting. We’re not paid anything (for arrests),” he said.
The police officer is allegedly a member of one of the anti-illegal drugs units in Metro Manila, which had been ordered dissolved by President Duterte on Sunday.
Because of the cash incentive, “it never happens that there’s a shootout and no one is killed,” said the police officer.
Police allegedly even made deals with funeral parlors and allegedly got cash for each dead body. According to the AI report.
Policemen also allegedly stole from the houses of the victims.
“The police are behaving like the criminal underworld that they are supposed to be enforcing the law against, by carrying out extrajudicial executions disguised as unknown killers and ‘contracting out’ killings,” said Amnesty.
Rawya Rageh, a senior crisis adviser for Amnesty, interviewed by Agence France Presse also said that the killings may be considered crimes against humanity for being widespread, deliberate and systematic.
“Acting on orders from the very top, policemen and unknown killers have been targeting anybody remotely suspected of using of selling drugs,” Rageh said.
“Our investigation shows that this wave of extrajudicial killings has been widespread, deliberate and systematic, and therefore may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Among a litany of alleged crimes, Amnesty accused police of shooting dead defenseless people, fabricating evidence, paying assassins to murder drug addicts and stealing from those they killed or the victims’ relatives.
It also said police were being paid by their superiors to kill, and documented victims as young as eight years old.
“The police are behaving like the criminal underworld that they are supposed to be enforcing the law against,” the report said.
It warned that the International Criminal Court would need to start investigating unless Philippine authorities did not stop it soon.
“The police killings are driven by pressures from the top, including an order to ‘neutralise’ alleged drug offenders, as well as financial incentives. They have created an informal economy of death,” the report said.
Amnesty said it investigated the deaths of 59 people, and found the majority of them were extrajudicial killings.
In a number of cases witnesses to killings or victims’ relatives told Amnesty that the person shot dead was unarmed and had not resisted arrest.
Police also planted drugs and weapons that they later “seized” as evidence, Amnesty said.
“I will surrender, I will surrender, sir,” Gener Rondina, 38, told police after they broke into his home in the central city of Cebu, a witness told Amnesty.
Rondina then knelt and raised his arms behind his head but police then shot him dead, Amnesty said, citing the witness.
When family members were allowed into the house six hours after Gener was shot, valuables including a laptop, watch and money were missing, according to Amnesty.
Police alleged Rondina had a gun and they acted in self defence, and the method of killing as well as the justification was typical of the drug war, Amnesty said.
Amnesty also warned that the lists of drug suspects that police were using to target people were deeply flawed.
This was partly because many people were placed on the lists simply after being reported by fellow community members, without any further investigation, according to Amnesty.
Duterte had until this week been unrepentant in response to criticism of his drug war and the police, insisting he was acting within the law but that extreme measures must be taken to stop the Philippines from becoming a narco state.
After a series of scandals emerged over the past month in which police were caught committing murder, kidnapping, extortion and robbery, Duterte
this week ordered them to stop all activities related to the drug war.
He described the police force as “corrupt to the core” and vowed to cleanse it.
But he also vowed the drug war would continue until the last day of his term, in 2022.
He said police would return to the drug war after he reorganized the force and, in the meantime, the military would become more involved.
(with a report from Agence France Presse)
