In the wake of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) maintained that the state will continue to uphold human rights as a government policy.

“With the pronouncements of President Duterte, we are continuously upholding human rights as a state policy,” DILG Assistant Secretary Epimaco Densing III said during the presentation of the results of the agency’s probe on alleged human rights violations committed by state forces in the war against drugs.

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This as the DILG found in its independent probe that there are “no massive human rights violations” committed by the state forces in the drug war.

The DILG randomly chose and studied 25 cases of alleged summary killings from the Philippine National Police’s Internal Affairs Service from July 1 to October 13. To date, the PNP has tallied over 5,000 deaths since the drug war started in July.

“(Based on the samples), indicatively, there are no human rights violations,” Densing said.

Out of 25, the DILG only found discrepancies in two cases. He said the DILG will have those cases reinvestigated because the police report did not match the findings of the DILG team.

“Based on the results, 23 or 92% of the 25 cases have the same result with the police report, while the remaining two or 8% of the cases have questionable police information,” he said.

Twelve of the 25 cases were conducted in Metro Manila, one in Nueva Ecija, one in Pampanga, five in Calabarzon region, and two each in Cebu, Iloilo and Zamboanga.

The investigation was based on the perspectives of the survived suspect, family, friends and neighbors, and the police.

Stressing that there are no state-sanctioned killings in the country, Densing reiterated the earlier pronouncements of President Duterte that he wants “human rights as a basis for governance.”

“What he does not want is to use human rights as a shield to cover up crimes and destroy our country by the drug lords,” he said.

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The DILG also recommended the use of body cameras in police operations and inclusion of a “Human Rights” subject in the curriculum for aspiring police officers.

The agency also wants the PNP to hire more personnel to speed up the solving of unsolved cases of deaths.

It also recommended to the PNP that all operating officers be required to take seminars on human rights and the technicalities involving it during police operations. CDG/JE

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