Opinion 8/23/16 (Philippines, extrajudicial killing, drugs, UN, Duterte, de Lima)

Sun.Star Cebu's Carvajal: "In Aid of"

OF COURSE, extrajudicial killings by scalawags in the police force, as Sen. Leila de Lima is passionately crusading against, and extrajudicial killings by drug lords and other lords, as she surprisingly is not crusading against, not as passionately anyway, have both to be stopped. Such killings simply have no place in the nation of laws that we are.
It is not a matter of course, however, that Senate investigations can stop these killings. These investigations are conducted by design and intent for nothing more than to aid legislation. Thus in the past these have often turned out to be platforms for grandstanding by legislators in aid of their re-election.
From her experience as justice secretary, Senator de Lima should already know what law, if any, is needed to be passed to help stop extra-judicial killings (by all and not just by the police) without having to waste government time and money on endless but ineffective pro-forma investigations.
It is the faulty enforcement of laws and the slow grind of cases in our courts (both rooted in official corruption) that are to blame as the senator ought to have learned from her inability to conclude the cases against suspects in the Maguindanao and Mamasapano massacres and from her failure to stop convicted drug lords from continuing to call the shots from their luxurious Bilibid prison cells. [full text]

Manila Times's Tatad "Is it our own ‘Reign of Terror’?"

At the outset, President Rodrigo Duterte promised he would be harsh. He has kept his word. Since July 1, close to a thousand suspected drug pushers have been killed by the police and vigilantes. Several hundred thousand drug users have been thrown in jail. Nearly all the fatalities were killed “while resisting arrest,” but The New York Times has reported the case of father and son Renato and Jaypee Bartes, who were killed while already detained by the police. The police said the two had tried to escape by seizing an officer’s gun but forensic examination found that both men had been incapacitated by beatings before they were shot. Jaypee Bartes had a broken right arm, according to the report.
Now the police are entering private homes in private subdivisions looking for drugs and drug pushers and users without any search or arrest warrant. DU30 has excoriated the United Nations for asking him to end the extrajudicial killings, calling it interference in the internal affairs of our republic. A reported Malacanang “dare” to the UN, issued by Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo, to come and see for themselves what’s happening here has created a muddle inside the Palace, after the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions Dr. Agnes Callamard had “accepted the invitation.” full text]