Top government officials should be held liable, not only law enforcement agents, in the lapses and irregularities committed in the illegal drugs operations that have resulted in deaths to thousands of suspects.
Edre U. Olalia, president of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), said the inter-agency panel appears “wittingly or unwittingly diverts the primary and sole blame on lowly police operatives and insulated and saved the principal enablers of the EJKs” (extra-judicial killings).
Specifically, Olalia pointed to President Duterte and other top officials who, he claimed, “goaded, sanctioned and condoned the EJKs.”
Olalia reacted to the report of Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra to the United Human Rights Council (UNHRC) during an online meeting of he council.
Among other things, Guevarra said that there were irregularities committed by members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the illegal drugs operations that have resulted in the deaths of suspects.
Guevarra said the findings have been forwarded to the President and to the PNP.
Olalia said the findings of the review panel led by the Department of Justice (DOJ) are “belated realizations.”
He said that “while it (the panel) validated the long-held fact not only of sloppy police work or even as cover up for the false and formulaic narratives of ‘nanlaban’ (fought back), these refer only to post-EJK protocols or procedures and dodge the fundamental and more crucial question: why did these EJK happen in the first place and are continuing with impunity?”
He also said that “the domestic remedies they are parading are functioning not for justice but by and large - from the perspective of the victims and human rights defenders - to delay, deny, and deprive full justice to them.”