TEHRAN, Jul 9 - Amnesty International urgently called for international pressure and an immediate U.N. investigation to help end what it says are possible crimes against humanity in the Philippine president's bloody anti-drug crackdown.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The London-based rights watchdog said in a study released Monday that extrajudicial killings in President Rodrigo Duterte's 3-year-old campaign remain rampant and the scale of abuses has reached "the threshold of crimes against humanity."
About 6,600 people, most of them accused of petty drug crimes, have been killed in the crackdown Duterte launched as his centerpiece project when he took office in mid-2016.
But nongovernment groups claim a much higher death toll, including many suspects killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen human rights groups suspect were financed by police officers.
Duterte and the police have denied any authorization of extrajudicial killings. Duterte, however, has repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death in televised speeches and encouraged law enforcers to shoot suspects who fight back.
He has warned that the crackdown will be more dangerous for suspects in the final three years of his six-year term.
Philippine National Police chief Oscar Albayalde said such claims were "allegations that have never been proven." All police actions, he said, have been done within the bounds of the law and the constitution, which guarantees the protection of human rights.
Amnesty said Bulacan province north of the capital has become "the country's bloodiest killing field" after some officers involved in the crackdown were transferred there from the Manila metropolis, which used to be the "epicenter of killings."
"The reliance on violent and repressive policies continues to perpetuate human rights violations and abuses in the country," Amnesty said in its study.
Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty's regional director for East and Southeast Asia, said Duterte's campaign "continues to be nothing but a large-scale murdering enterprise for which the poor continue to pay the highest price."
Amnesty said it investigated 20 drug-related incidents in which 27 people were killed across Bulacan from May 2018 to last April by interviewing witnesses, families of the dead, local officials and rights activists.
Source: AP
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