Senator Leila de Lima, chair of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, leads the inquiry on the extrajudicial killings, Monday morning.(MNS photo)
MANILA, Oct. 18 (PNA) – Amid unresolved killings linked to the anti-illegal drugs campaign of the current administration, a senator on Tuesday urged the government to fix the campaign’s defects to prevent the number of killings from increasing.
Senator Leila de Lima made this call citing an alternate report submitted by the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) last week noting that the administration has failed in addressing extrajudicial and summary killings in the country.
The report also noted that the administration was more concerned on “winning the war on drugs, rather than investigating and preventing these killings.”
Moreover, it also noted several defects in the implementation of intensified anti-illegal drug campaign which, as of last Sept. 15, claimed the lives of 986 since June 30, including innocent individuals, including children, treated as “collateral damage” in the anti-drive campaign.
“The rash of extrajudicial and summary killings has become a serious concern not only domestically but also internationally. We cannot claim success in the government’s war against drugs if there are innocent individuals who are being summarily killed or those apprehended were not accorded due process of the law,” de Lima said.
De Lima, who was former justice secretary, earlier filed Senate Bill No. 1197 which seeks to define extrajudicial killings and imposing penalties of life imprisonment without parole for any public officer, person in authority, agency of a person in authority or private individual who would be found guilty of extrajudicial killing.
Under the measure, the local chief executive and chief of police shall also be presumed administratively negligent when there is a notable increase of extrajudicial killing cases within their area of jurisdiction, except in conflict-stricken communities.
De Lima also proposed the creation of an Inter-Agency Council Against Extrajudicial Killings (Anti-EJK Council) to address institutional barriers to investigation of extrajudicial killings among concerned government agencies.
The proposed Anti-EJK Council will coordinate with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and Commission on Human Rights (CHR), to adhere to minimum standards in the conduct of regular police intervention operations.