MANILA – While professing his respect for the outcome of the 2017 third-quarter Social Weather Survey showing a retreat in the satisfaction and trust ratings of President Duterte, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Ronald dela Rosa said it would be out-of-sync to be dragging the issue of extra-judicial killings into the picture.
In the first place, Dela Rosa pointed out, there is no extra-judicial killing, or EJK. Or, put another way, there has been no EJK incident logged by the law enforcement establishment.
To Dela Rosa, therefore, what this means is that there is no EJK. By definition, that is.
Citing the PNP spokesman, Dela Rosa told journalists: “Sinabi ng aming spokesman na walang EJK. Totoo naman talaga, kung pagbasehan natin ang definition ng EJK (It’s true there is no EJK if we base this on the definition). The difficult thing with our critics is that they had one definition of the term, before, and now they are twisting it to use against us.”
Citing the operational guidelines pertinent to Administrative Order 35, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella explains that a killing would be considered extra-judicial if the victim is a member or suspected member of a political, environmental, agrarian, or labor group, or a journalist. And that the killing would have to be in connection with the work, or exercise of profession, of the victim.
The government claim that there has been no extra-judicial killing did not sit well with Human Rights Watch Geneva Director John Fisher, who reacted by saying that was “Absurd. The suggestion that nobody has been killed in an extra-judicial fashion is not in conformity with the international definition of EJK.”
Fisher arrived over the weekend to find out more about the “alarming” incidence of killings related to the government’s war on drugs.
He has said that the Philippines stands at risk of getting expelled from the United Nations Human Rights Council for “regularly violating human rights obligations. If the government refuses to face up to its international responsibility. ”
For Dela Rosa, all this talk is nothing more than smearing the reputation of the country. He said he’d like to see proof to back up the accusation: “These critics want to arouse the sentiment of the public to go against the government.”
Click and watch this video report below:
This clip, below, shows the reaction of Human Rights Watch’s John Fisher:
