Senator Panfilo Lacson described the decision of the US State Department to halt its planned rifle sale to the National Police (PNP) as plain “bullying.”
“The United States’ decision to halt the planned sale of 26,000 rifles to the National Police was not a scare tactic but a bully attitude towards a longtime ally–which is not fair, the Philippines being an equally sovereign state,” Lacson said in a statement.
The United States State Department has suspended the sale of 26,000 military assault rifles to the National Police due to opposition to the sale by Senator Ben Cardin, a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Cardin opposed the deal due to “concerns about human rights violations in the Philippines.”
The National Police’s own data indicate that the campaign resulted in the police killing at least 1,736 “suspected drug personalities” between July 1 and Oct. 28. That’s more than twentyfold the 68 recorded between Jan. 1 and June 15. Police say an additional 3,001 alleged drug users and drug dealerswere killed in that July-October period by “unidentified gunmen.” Police have attributed the police killings to suspects who “resisted arrest and shot at police officers,” but have not provided further evidence that the police acted in self-defense. Police Director-General Ronald dela Rosa has characterized the killings as proof of an “uncompromising” police approach to drug crimes.
The State Department’s decision is the first real US move to put teeth in its criticism of the spiraling death toll Duterte’s “drug war.” And it’s hit the police where it hurts: dela Rosa has said it “has a huge effect” on police efforts to expand their arsenal. But he can’t say that he didn’t see it coming. Senator Cardin castigated the abuses linked to Duterte’s anti-drug campaign during a September 26 Senate Colloquy as “systematic, wide-spread, brutal, and beyond the bounds for a constitutional democracy.” In that same colloquy, Senator Patrick Leahy warned of possible “further conditions on assistance to the Duterte government to ensure that US taxpayer funds are properly spent and until that government demonstrates a commitment to the rule of law.”
Other US funding to the police, including $9 million in State Department aid for counter-narcotics and law enforcement programs for 2017 and $32 million in assistance pledged by US Secretary of State John Kerry in July, may be at risk unless they stop the killings rather than abuse, the rights of Filipinos. (hrw)
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