Rappler reviews evidence of police culpability in drug war killings

CHEERS TO Rappler’s investigative team for reviewing the drug war files and revealing government’s failure to hold police accountable for alleged cases of extrajudicial killings in their operations. The three-part report followed Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra’s crucial admission of police culpability when he delivered his address at a UN Human Rights Center on February 24.

Much of the media coverage went online to report what Guevarra said, noting how he cited critical flaws in the government’s anti-drug campaign and acknowledged PNP’s failure to follow protocols in anti-drug operations – but without analysis and background about the significance of his admission.

Rappler’s review clarified with greater context what Guevarra was saying to the UNHRC. It provided the background of the probe conducted by the Supreme Court, which Rappler said was stalled by the submission of “rubbish” and incomplete files by the Office of the Solicitor (OSG) in 2018.

The three-part series, published daily from February 24 to 26, took up several aspects of the problematic drug war, providing a comprehensive examination of the problems arising from Duterte’s centerpiece program.

The first report scrutinized the first batch of documents on the drug war killings and revealed how police anti-drug operations violated legal protocols and standards of regularity. The second report focused on known hot spots that had well-publicized killings, pointing out what was blatantly missing in the OSG submissions. The concluding report zoomed in on Bulacan, with over 500 alleged drug killings from 2016 to 2017 alone. While close to half of the victims’ names appeared on the drug watch list, PNP’s documents did not record these as victims of police operations. Rappler then asked why police weren’t able to stop the killings that occurred successively in the same places.

The administration has continuously dismissed as fictitious the charges of atrocities in the conduct of the drug policy and the issue has been left in journalism’s cold files. Rappler revived the questions and confirmed the true extent of drug-related killings, revealing the pattern of attacks based on solid evidence to support their findings. Cheers!