Launched a
year ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal war on drugs has
resulted in thousands of deaths, yet the street price of crystal
methamphetamine in
Manila has fallen and surveys show Filipinos are as anxious
as ever about crime.
Duterte took
power on June 30 last year, vowing to halt the drug abuse and lawlessness he
saw as "symptoms of virulent social disease."
Thanks to
his campaign, government officials say, crime has dropped, thousands of drug
dealers are behind bars, a million users have registered for treatment, and
future generations of Filipinos are being protected from the scourge of drugs.
"There
are thousands of people who are being killed, yes," said Oscar Albayalde,
Metro Manila's police chief told Reuters. "But there are millions who
live, see?"
A growing
chorus of critics, however, including human rights activists, lawyers and the
country's influential Catholic Church, dispute the authorities' claims of
success.
They say
police have summarily executed drug suspects with impunity, terrorizing poorer
communities and exacerbating the very lawlessness they were meant to tackle.
"This
president behaves as if he is above the law - that he is the law," wrote
Amado Picardal, an outspoken Filipino priest, in a recent article for a
Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines publication. "He has
ignored the rule of law and human rights."
The drug
war's exact death toll is hotly disputed, with critics saying the toll is far
above the 5,000 that police have identified as either drug-related killings, or
suspects shot dead during police operations.
Most victims
are small-time users and dealers, while the masterminds behind the lucrative
drug trade are largely unknown and at large, say critics of Duterte's ruthless
methods.
If the
strategy was working the laws of economics suggest the price of crystal meth,
the highly addictive drug also known as 'shabu', should be rising as less
supply hits the streets.
But the
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency's own data suggests shabu has become even
cheaper in Manila.
In July
2016, a gram of shabu cost 1,200-11,000 pesos ($24-$220), according to agency's
figures. Last month, a gram cost 1,000-15,000 pesos ($20-$300), it said.
The wide
ranges reflect swings in availability and sharp regional variations. Officials
say Manila's street prices are at the lowest end of the range. And that has
come down, albeit by just a few dollars.
"If
prices have fallen, it's an indication that enforcement actions have not been
effective," said Gloria Lai of the International Drug Policy Consortium, a
global network of non-governmental groups focused on narcotics.
The problem
is, according to Derrick Carreon, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency's
spokesman, that while nine domestic drug labs have been busted, shabu smuggled
in from overseas has filled the market gap.
"Demand
needs to be addressed because there are still drug smugglers," Carreon
said.
While
smuggled shabu has kept the price down in the capital, the official data shows
the price has gone up in the already substantially more expensive far-flung
regions, like the insurgency-racked southern island of Mindanao.
Duterte
declared martial law in Mindanao last month after militants inspired by Islamic
State stormed Marawi City, and the army's failure to retake the city quickly
has dented the president's image as a law-and-order president.
AFRAID OF
THE DARK
Surveys by
Social Weather Stations (SWS), a leading Manila pollster, reveal a public
broadly supportive of Duterte's anti-drug campaign, but troubled by its methods
and dubious about its effectiveness.
SWS surveys
in each of the first three quarters of Duterte's rule showed a "very high
satisfaction" with the anti-drug campaign, said Leo Laroza, a senior SWS
researcher.
In the most
recent survey, published on April, 92 percent said it was important that drug
suspects be captured alive.
Respondents
also reported a 6.3 percent rise in street robberies and break-ins. More than
half of those polled said they were afraid to venture out at night, a
proportion that had barely changed since the drug war began, said Laroza.
"People
still have this fear when it comes to their neighborhoods," he said.
"It has not gone down."
Public and
police perceptions of crime levels seem to diverge.
The number
of crimes committed in the first nine months of Duterte's rule has dropped by
30 percent, according to police statistics cited by the president's
communications team.
Albayalde,
the capital's police chief, said people, particularly in Manila, felt safer
now, especially due to a crackdown on drug users who he said commit most of the
crime.
In the first
11 months of Duterte's rule, police say 3,155 suspects were shot dead in
anti-drug operations. Critics maintain that many of them were summarily
executed.
Police say
they have investigated a further 2,000 drug-related killings, and have yet to
identify a motive in at least another 7,000 murders and homicides.
Human rights
monitors believe many of these victims were killed by undercover police or
their paid vigilantes, a charge the police deny.
For
residents of Navotas fishport, a warren of shacks near Manila's docks, the body
count is too high. There were nine killings in a single night in Navotas
earlier this month, according to local media.
In mid-May,
said resident Mary Joy Royo, a dozen gunmen arrived on motorbikes and abducted
her mother and stepfather. Their corpses were found later with execution-style
gunshots to the head and torso.
"They
should be targeting the drug lords," Royo told Reuters. "The victims
of the drug war are the poor people."
RIPPLE
EFFECT
As the death
toll has risen, so has domestic and international outrage.
In October,
the Hague-based International Criminal Court said it could investigate the
killings if they were "committed as part of a widespread or systematic
attack against a civilian population."
Police
operations were halted for much of February after it emerged that anti-drug
police abducted and killed a South Korean businessman last year, but the outcry
over the rising body count has rarely slowed the killing or led to
prosecutions.
The
Philippine Commission on Human Rights is investigating 680 drug-war killings.
"In
this country the basic problem is impunity," Chito Gascon, the
commission's chairman, said. "No one is ever held to account for the worst
violations. Ever."
Police chief
Albayalde says that the force's Internal Affairs Service (IAS) investigates all
allegations of abuse by his officers.
"We do
not tolerate senseless killings," he said. "We do not just kill
anybody."
IAS told
Reuters it had investigated 1,912 drug-related cases and recommended 159
officers for dismissal due to misconduct during anti-drug operations, although
it didn't know whether any had yet been dismissed.
Earlier this
month, 19 police officers charged with murdering two drug suspects in their
jail cell in November were released on bail and now face trial for the lesser
crime of homicide.
Duterte, who
has repeatedly urged police to kill drug suspects, had already vowed to pardon
the officers if they were convicted.
"You
have a head of state who says, 'Kill, kill, kill,' a head of state who says,
'I've got your back,'" said CHR's Gascon. "That has a ripple
effect."
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