Posted on 05/03/2017 8:36:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Police in the Philippines defended the country's ongoing and deadly war on drugs Tuesday as they accused the international media of overstating death tolls.
The new data release comes amid widespread shock over US President Donald Trump's decision to invite Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House, with many critics pointing to Duterte's deadly drug war.
In an elaborately planned, three-hour forum in an upscale Manila hotel, officials said 2,679 suspected drug users and dealers died during legitimate police operations between July 1 and January 30.
An additional 1,847 deaths between July 1 and March 31 are believed to have been drug-related, police said, but not the result of police activity.
CNN has reported extensively on the human cost of the drug war, including in Santo Niño, a neighborhood in metro Manila that has been dubbed the "City of the Dead."
"I buried my son in the grave that was meant for me," Ricardo Medina told CNN. His son, Ericardo, was stabbed numerous times and his face wrapped in packing tape, a grisly tactic common among the thousands of alleged vigilante killings that have happened since Duterte took office promising to rid the country of its drug problem by any means necessary.
Estimates of the number of deaths related to the drug war run as high as 8,000, based on figures released by the police and independent counts by human rights groups and media organizations.
Police on Tuesday, however, contested those totals, as well as allegations of widespread extrajudicial or vigilante killings.
Philippines Police Deputy Director General Ramon Apolinario cited "encounters" between drug-related groups as a reason for the deaths, adding that "even our own forces have been victimized."
Meanwhile, more than 5,000 homicides over those nine months remain "under investigation,"
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Media campaign launched
International rights groups have condemned the spate of drug-related killings in the Southeast Asian country of 100 million people.
Even so, the public remains largely in favor of Duterte’s campaign. A poll in December found that while 78% of Filipinos feared they or someone they know will be a victim of extrajudicial killings, 85% of respondents were nevertheless satisfied with the ongoing operations in the drug war, according to CNN Philippines.
As of March, 75% of those surveyed said they were satisfied with Duterte’s performance.
During Tuesday’s forum, police played videos of former drug users, dealers, and the victims of drug-related crimes hailing the benefits of the drug war, with many saying they now feel safer in formerly crime-infested cities.
An accompanying social media campaign calls for the public to “know the real numbers” related to the drug war, with the hashtag #RealNumbersPH. The discussion was quickly dominated by pro-Duterte voices critical of the international media.
Wow with all the evil in the world why are we worried about this. We have the death penalty. So do they. We just have a long drawn out trial before hand.
Is it possible that we are not getting the whole story here. Is it possible that the See of China is riddled with pirates and drug smugglers. And that the governments fall into two categories, those who hate the open water criminals, and those who are on the side of at least one gang.
Its possible that China is trying to stop the criminals on the high sees. And the US is worried about China getting too much control. This is more than what it seems. There are issues here that are not showing up in the propaganda. And remember the Philippines claim much of this area.
RE: Is it possible that we are not getting the whole story here.
I have lots of friends in the Philippines and have lived and worked as an ex-pat for some years ( I can also speak their native language — Tagalog ).
Many people claim that these so-called extra-judicial killings are perpetrated by drug lords themselves as the Police ring closes in on them. They kill the lower level pushers in order to prevent them from squealing.
Many of these drug lords are actually corrupt officials who are the higher ups in law enforcement and the military.
Not many people believe this to be so simple, however and many believe that Duterte himself still has his own death squads. Duterte himself is not making things re-assuring by BOASTING openly that as Mayor of Davao ( the Philippine’s third largest city ), he himself has executed several drug lords. He even compared himself to Hitler executing the Jews.
Whether this is true or simply verbal bravura to strike fear in the hearts of drug lords, I do not know.
So, this is the kind of person Trump has to deal with.
Trump has to deal with people he does not like. The Philippines say they control much of the China Sea. And if they don’t, America has little access to the area. We would have to go around the Philippines to get from Australia to Korea.
Obama worked with the leaders of Iran. And he, Bush and Hillary worked with Putin. America is not new to dealing with horrible leaders of strategic friends. Presidents from both parties have been dealing with despicable despots from the 40’s with Stalin, the fifties in Cuba. The sixties in the middle east. The Seventies in South America. The eighties in the Philippines again and Afghanistan in the nineties. We have been at this for a very long time.
The numbers are not exaggerated, they are just ignoring the normal murder rate and not put into the context of drug raids.
I figure it is “killing a chicken to scare away a monkey”...
The corrupt politicians figure they could be next.
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