MANILA: A senator and detained critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has warned he and his “blind followers” will pay for ignoring alleged extrajudicial killings, and should stop trying to fool the world their crackdown was above board.
Leila de Lima, who last year led a Senate probe into alleged summary killings during Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign, was arrested last week and has been remanded in police detention on drug charges.
“In due time, your president and those who blindly enforce his illegal orders to kill, fabricate evidence and concoct lies will be held accountable,” De Lima said in a handwritten note posted on her official Facebook page on Friday.
The senator was responding to rebuttals by the president’s office and the police of a report by Human Rights Watch, which on Thursday challenged official accounts that thousands of killings during police operations were in self-defence.
The New York-based group said Duterte had turned a blind eye to murders by police in a “campaign of extrajudicial execution”. The president’s spokesman said the allegations, without proof, were “hearsay”.
De Lima, who is charged with facilitating drug trades in jails when she was justice minister, said the denial of state-sponsored killings and demands for proof were insults to people’s intelligence. — Reuters
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