Transparency, accountability, not impunity in anti-drug campaign

FILE: Secretary Menardo Guevarra during a press briefing in Malacañang. TOTO LOZANO/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO

GENEVA, Switzerland – Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Tuesday underscored at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council that the Philippines’ transparent and strong institutions ensure that the government’s responses to the challenges facing the country, including drugs, corruption, terrorism and crimes, are within law and in full respect for human rights.

Speaking for the Philippine government via video participation during the 44th UN Human Rights Council’s Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on the Philippines here, Guevarra said “claims that there is impunity or near-impunity in the country find no anchor in a system that provides every avenue to examine, establish and pursue a claim of wrongdoing by a State actor, if such claim is substantiated with facts”.

He informed the Geneva-based body that the Department of Justice heads a review panel that is conducting a judicious review of the 5,655 anti-illegal drugs operations where deaths occurred.

The Philippine National Police, he said, is obliged by its internal mechanisms to conduct motu propio investigations — whether or not there are complainants — on all law enforcement operations that result in deaths, and take action on this basis.

This review mechanism led by the DOJ is external to the PNP and is tasked with re-evaluating each of these cases and undertake re-investigate or file appropriate charges as warranted.

The panel engages affected families and provides them with legal options and assistance in the criminal prosecution of law enforcers who have overstepped legal bounds in their operations.

It will present a report on its work by the end of November of this year.

Guevarra added that this review mechanism will not only reinforce accountability on the drug campaign, but will also tighten the web of existing mechanisms to prevent cases of impunity in the country, such as the AO 35 inter-agency body that monitor and pursue cases of extra-legal killings, enforced disappearances and torture.

He said RealNumbersPH is a monitoring platform that has ensured public transparency and full accountability in the ant-illegal drug campaign since 2016.

This platform accounts for, and publishes evidence-based outcomes of the campaign across 42,046 villages across the country, as well as figures on law enforcement actions and drug-related cases in the courts.

President Rodrigo R. Duterte, he said, “ran and won on a campaign promise of a drug-free Philippines where our people are safe and their rights protected” and that the President “has discharged this mandate faithfully.”

He said after four years in office, the President and his anti-drug campaign enjoy the strong and widespread support of our people and the government will sustain this campaign, citing that “as a democracy, (the Philippines) must continue on a path that has the public’s unflagging support.”

With all human rights-related mechanisms in the country, he said, the Commission on Human Rights will be involved in the review panel in its capacity as an independent monitoring body.

The unhampered functioning of the Philippines’ CHR, a constitutional body that is one of the most independent human rights institutions in the world, renders as unjustified and groundless calls for an international independent investigative mechanism on the country, he said.

Guevarra assured the Human Rights Council that the government takes “each case brought before our authorities with the diligence it deserves”, and that independence of Philippine courts “is affirmed by convictions of a Major General in 2018 and of members of a political family and police officials in 2019, and the indictment of a former Police Chief in January this year.”