Political Science Essay

Topic: Anti-Drug Campaign of Duterte Administration

Unending Battle of Illegal Crimes and Human Rights Violation

One of the most distinguished reasons for crimes in the Philippines is often linked and

associated with one reason – addiction to drugs. According to Statista Research Department in

2018, approximately there are 47,000 cases of crimes involving illegal drugs. As a response to

the growing problem of illegal drugs in the country, the outgoing President Duterte ordered

police and customs officials to eliminate the problem by killing the alleged drug smugglers,

users, and purveyors. According to Philippine National Police, 5,903 individuals were killed

during the anti-drug operations. The question of whether the extra-judicial killings solved the

problem of illegal drugs remains unanswered.

Following his election as president, Duterte started asking local police and elected

officials for the names of drug suspects. This is referred to as a "watch list," and according to

Duterte's various accounts, it contains anywhere between 600,000 and 1 million names,

including at least 6,000 police officers, 5,000 local village leaders, and 23 mayors. The majority

of those on the list were targets of "Operation Knock & Plead" (Oplan Tokhang), which led to

the surrender of 687,000 people to police across the nation, further taxing an all ready

overburdened.
 “Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you have

my support. Shoot [the drug dealer] and I’ll give you a medal”, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte

said on June 6, 2016. President Rodrigo Duterte has dragged the Philippines into a nightmare of

gruesome killing in the name of combating drug crime. The police claim to have killed more

than 2000 persons suspected of drug-related offenses since July 1 [2016]. In addition, more than

3500 homicides—many committed by unidentified vigilantes—remain unsolved.

While the overall rate of violence has decreased since the peak of the drug war in 2016,

when Duterte first took office, there have been significant shifts in trends, including the key

actors in the conflict and the geographic distribution of the violence. Over 48 percent of civilian

targets were targeted by anti-drug "vigilantes," who are mostly thought to have connections to

the Philippine security apparatus. This occurred in the early months of the drug war in 2016.

However, the percentage of governmental engagement in drug war violence has been trending

higher since 2020. In the Philippines, the government has begun to target civilians more often

and is no longer attempting to separate itself by 'outsourcing' the majority of the violence to

vigilantes.

The authorities have not taken the great majority of "drug war" fatalities seriously. Few

instances are being investigated by prosecutors at various levels. Numerous police officers were

found guilty in 2018 in only one case — the murder of 17-year-old Kian Delos Santos, which

was seen on camera, in August 2017. Given the significant position of major agencies
responsible for murders in the committee's leadership, the formation of a committee to

investigate incidents of police involvement in killings—which was initially promised by the

secretary of justice to the UN Human Rights Council—is of questionable usefulness. In

September, President Duterte gave customs agents the go-ahead to execute accused drug

traffickers, further promoting the practice. Additionally, he often attacked and rejected

oppositional organizations to the "war on drugs."

There is also the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which in February

2018 opened an investigation into allegations that Duterte and other Philippine officials had

committed crimes against humanity during the government's deadly crackdown on drugs. Time

will tell how much extrajudicial killing occurs in the Philippines under new guidelines that

purportedly leave "no space for possible abuse." Although this chapter in the history of state

killing in the Philippines is far from over, we may draw five conclusions from it that law and

society students should be aware of.

References:

Kishi, R. 2021. The Drug War Rages on In the Philippines: New Data on The Civilian Toll, State

Responsibility, And Shifting Geographies of Violence.

https://acleddata.com/2021/11/18/the-drug-war-rages-on-in-the-philippines-new-acled-

data-on-the-civilian-toll-state-responsibility-and-shifting-geographies-of-violence/

World Report 2021: Human Rights Watch. 2021

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country- chapters/Philippines

Johnson, D. et al. 2018. Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the Philippines.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/asian-journal-of-law-and-

society/article/governing-through-killing-the-war-on-drugs-in-the-

philippines/878BFFB53E2705BEFD2373CDAC3E84F4

Dangerous Drug Board. 2020. https://www.ddb.gov.ph/newsroom/511-2019-drug-survey-shows-

drug-use-prevalence-rate-falls-to-2-05

Statista Research Development. 2021. Number of crime incidents involving drugs Philippines

2018, by status. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183890/philippines-crime-incidents-

involving-drugs-by- status/#:~:text=Number%20of%20crime%20incidents

%20involving%20drugs%20Philip pines%202018%2C%20by%20status&text=In

%202018%2C%20there%20were%20appr oximately,were%20cleared%20for%20the

%20crime.
Proof of Plagscan: