By Martin Sadongdong

The Philippine National Police (PNP) maintained on Saturday that 98 percent of all its anti-illegal drug operations were found to be compliant to human rights standards — a claim the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) doubts.

PNP chief, Director General Oscar Albayalde said the national police headquarters has established its Human Rights Affairs Office (HRAO) which directly coordinates to the CHR for transparency.

The statement that 98 percent of anti-illegal drug operations were compliant to human rights standards was first made by Albayalde on Thursday.

However, CHR Chairman Chito Gascon questioned the basis of the PNP in issuing such statement and dared the police organization to release into public all the records of their operations.

“We’ve been sharing everything already to CHR, I don’t know what more do they want from us. We have regular reports to the CHR. We have our Human Rights Office here that is in constant coordination with them. I really don’t know what more do they want from us,” Albayalde said in response.

If the CHR doubts the 98-percent compliance of the police operations to human rights standards, Albayalde said they should personally talk to the PNP-Internal Affairs Service (IAS).

IAS is an agency of the PNP which conducts motu propio investigations on all anti-illegal drug operations especially when there is a casualty.

“We based our statement to the IAS data. So it is not true that we don’t investigate our own operations especially if there’s a casualty. There’s the IAS and remember, it is an independent body,” he said.

Although IAS is under the PNP and most of its personnel are PNP officers, the country’s top cop said the department has its own lawyers.

Furthermore, Albayalde said the IAS data showed police operations “are not perfect” since it did not reflect a 100-percent compliance of police operations to human rights standards.

“We did not say that all of these operations are perfect. Remember we filed cases of human rights violations against 438 of our own personnel. We did not say we’re perfect. Otherwise, we would not be filing cases against our own men,” he stressed.

The claim of a 98-percent compliance of all anti-illegal drug operations to human rights standards came after a supposed review made by the PNP-HRAO.

However, a copy of the results of the said review has yet to be made public.