CHR dares PNP to show proof all killed in operations drug dealers

October 8, 2017

The Commission on Human Rights on Sunday challenged the Philippine National Police to release the records that will support Department of Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano's claim that all the more than 3,000 people killed in the administration's anti-illegal drug campaign were drug dealers.

"I don't know where Secretary Cayetano got his figures and he said that all were drug dealers. That's why we are challenging the PNP to release all their investigations of the 3,000 plus of what they are saying," CHR Commissioner Gwen Pimentel-Gana said in a radio interview.

"So they should tell us the result if they already have a conclusion that all the 3,000 plus extra-judicial killing cases reported by the PNP are all drug dealers," she added.

Gana said they will compare the government's report to their independent investigation which shows that not all killed in the police operations were drug dealers.

"In our investigation, like the death of teenagers, like Kian (delos Santos), Reynaldo (de Guzman), those cases showed those who were killed were not drug dealers," she said.

She lamented over Cayetano's statement during an interview with Al Jazeera English's "UpFront" aired on Friday.

"It is saddening that we will only make a blank conclusion that all were drug dealers. That's why our approach is a case to case investigation. You can't make a general conclusion in the same way that we are not making a conclusion if all these cases of resistance are really legal resistance," she said.

Gadon said they are still waiting for the reports they requested from the PNP.

During the interview, asked by "UpFront" host if the suspects killed in the police operations were all drug dealers, Cayetano said, "yes." Ella Dionisio/DMS