Press Release
July 24, 2021

Dispatch from Crame No. 1,106:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima on the Palace claim that the Drug War is a Success

7/24/21

Only in the Philippines will the government claim success in the drug war because it killed more than 20,000 of its poor citizens. It is also the only country in the world where its former Justice Secretary calls drug war victims as not a part of humanity, and where children killed in police operations and vigilante assassinations are called "collateral damage". The PNP is also the only police force in the world to include in its annual report the killing of more than five thousand human beings as an accomplishment in the drug war.

This is the successful drug war Harry Roque is bragging about from his Malacañang pedestal. He should tell that to the families of those murdered and summarily executed by the PNP and Duterte's death squads in the past five years of bloodbath in our streets and right inside our homes. Maybe he can give them the consolation that their loved one's death was not in vain because 52% of barangays in the country are now drug-free, assuming that this is true, because their loved one was murdered to keep them clean. So probably Roque needs another 20,000 dead human beings to make the other 48% of barangays drug-free by the end of Duterte's term in June 2022, as he promised the other day.

This is how the Duterte government measures its success in the drug war, in the number of human beings murdered in cold blood. It does not help that the numbers are spouted by a former human rights lawyer who has but shed everything of his past advocacy for a piece of the sky, his 15 minutes of fame, or whatever that is he thinks is worth his soul. ###

(Access the handwritten version, here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatchno1106)

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