Philippine police return to President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, cannot promise ‘bloodless’ campaign
The announcement came as the justice department filed its first criminal case against officers who are accused of killing a teenager in cold blood
Police in the Philippines on Monday resumed President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, making visits to the homes of users and dealers to convince them to surrender, but the national police chief said he could not promise a bloodless campaign.
The announcement came as the justice department filed its first criminal case against police officers in the battle against drugs, bolstering human rights activists’ accusations of fabricated accounts of shoot-outs with drug suspects.
The programme of visits, known as “Oplan Tokhang”, made a comeback with an assurance from police chief Ronaldo dela Rosa that it should be free of violence if offenders agreed to go quietly and did not resist.
But Dela Rosa added he could not promise a “foolproof anti-drug campaign that would be bloodless”, as the police were “not dealing with people who are in their proper state of mind”.
In the dialect of Duterte’s southern hometown of Davao, “Tokhang” is a combination of the words “knock” and “plead”.
