Reds pull out of Duterte’s 'anti-people' drug war

BAGUIO CITY — The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has pulled out its participation in President Rodrigo Duterte's war against drugs.

 

The CPP tagged Duterte's anti-drug war as a “frenzied campaign of extrajudicial killings and vigilante murders.”  

 

“[T]he rights of tens upon thousands of people are being violated as the criminal justice system is upturned,” it added. 

 

The CPP earlier vowed to work hand-in-hand with Duterte and run after big-time drug lords in areas where its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), operates.

 

It, however, said the drug war has become anti-people and anti-democratic.

 

“Human rights are being violated with impunity by police personnel, emboldened by Duterte's assurances of 'I got your back' and his public declarations of contempt against human rights,” the CPP explained.

 

Although no longer participating in the administration’s drug war, the CPP maintains its orders to the NPA “to continue to intensify its operations to arrest and disarm drug trade operators and protectors.”

 

As before, the NPA said it will continue to exercise due process in dealing with suspects, such as the case of Philippine National Police (PNP) officers presently under its custody in Compostela Valley and Surigao del Sur.

The CPP also criticized the administration's drug campaign saying it “has unleashed unmitigated violence and threats of violence against the people, mostly victims, and people at the lowest rungs of the criminal syndicate ladder.”

 

Suspected big drug lords and their protectors, however, “are afforded courtesy calls to Malacañang, accommodations in Camp Crame's guest house and preliminary investigations by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation),” it said. 

 

The worst that they have been made to undergo is to suffer the lectures of the PNP chief, it added.

 

The administration has come up with one list after another of so-called protectors, narco-politicians and judges without proof nor a clear basis for accusations of their involvement in drugs, the CPP said noting that there were no explanation on how the lists were drawn up.

 

“Duterte has become so full of himself and intoxicated with the vast power he is not used to handle that he thinks he can get away with upturning the criminal judicial system and denouncing people for defending human rights,” the CPP said.

According to the CPP, Duterte's drug war is bound to fail “because it does not address the socio-economic roots of the problem.”

 

“It has been proven in history that no amount of killing will succeed in putting an end to the drug menace.”

The CPP cited Mexico “where after 10 years and with almost 80,000 people killed, the intensity of the drug problem remains the same if not worse.”

 

It said the "drug war" is also fast becoming “one of the facets of the factional struggle within the reactionary ruling classes, for control of resources, territories, police and military units.”

 

“[M]any of the summary and vigilante killings are being carried out by the criminal syndicates who use the 'anti-drug war' as camouflage for waging [an] all-out war against their rivals and their rival protectors in the police, bureaucracy and judiciary or to rub-out their own men,” it added.

 

The communist group noted that it would be no surprise that the information made public by Duterte about police protectors, narco-politicians and judges were fed to him by rival criminal syndicates.

 

The CPP also said that the most effective way of waging war against drugs “is by rousing the people and mobilizing them to become active participants in social revolution.”

 

“[T]he rampant problem of drug addiction among the people should be addressed in the economic as well as political and cultural fields,” it added saying that drug addiction has been virtually wiped out through mass struggles in thousands of barangays and clusters where it said revolutionary forces exercise governmental authority.