US urged to stop all Philippine police assistance programs over drug war

A police investigator marks plastic bags containing "shabu" after a police operation in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines Nov 15, 2016. Pic: Reuters/Czar Dancel

30th November 2016

SHOCKED by reports claiming the U.S. may have been indirectly funding Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial crackdown on the drug trade, an international rights group urged the global superpower to cut off all forms of assistance provided to local enforcers in the Southeast Asian country.

The Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Asia division deputy director Phelim Kine also suggested possible violations of the Leahy Law on Human Rights, which bars security force units implicated in human rights abuse cases from receiving U.S. government-supplied training or equipment.

“Training police who are murderers just makes them better murderers,” he pointed out in a statement Wednesday.

“The US – along with other foreign governments that provide funding and training assistance to the Philippine National Police, including the European Union – should signal its concern about Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ by immediately suspending assistance, including training, to the Philippine police.”

Kine was responding to a Tuesday report by BuzzFeed News alleging that although the U.S. has been publicly condemning Duterte’s unorthodox crime-fighting methods, it has continued to train and provide equipment to police units directly involved in the president’s drug-busting campaign.

The report citing government documents as well as former U.S. and Philippine officials claimed that the U.S. State Department sent millions of dollars in aid to programs for police departments nationwide, even as the death toll in the drug war spiked to shocking numbers.

A Rappler report earlier this month said Duterte’s anti-drugs crackdown has so far claimed the lives of 4,897 individuals, 1,896 who were slain during police operations, while 3,001 were said to be victims of vigilante-style killings.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Pic: AP.

SEE ALSO: As body count grows, Philippine groups join hands to stop drug killings

Julia Mason, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told BuzzFeed News, however, that the funds were no longer being used for counter-narcotics training, although she confirmed that other programmes benefiting the Philippine National Police (PNP) have not been changed.

Mason also said the police units said to be involved in the extrajudicial drug-related killings do not receive the assistance but BuzzFeed’s report suggested that this may not necessary be true. It said comparisons made between Philippine police data and internal State Department records show that there are officers at police stations receiving U.S. aid who have played key roles in the drug war.

“It is clear that many of the stations — especially those in the capital city of Manila — are collectively responsible for hundreds of deaths,” the report said.

It is not immediately known how true the claim is. Asian Correspondent has contacted the U.S. State Department for a response to the BuzzFeed article.

On Tuesday, however, a Reuters report quoting department officials said millions of dollars in aid to the Philippines law enforcement have already been shifted away from police drug control programs. Instead, the funding has been diverted to maritime security and human rights training for the PNP, according to department spokesman John Kirby.

SEE ALSO: US shifts money away from Philippines police drug efforts

The Philippines is said to be the third-largest Asian recipient of military aid from the U.S., after Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Southeast Asian nation’s intrepid president has on numerous occasions challenged the U.S. to withdraw aid, also vocalising his intention to revamp his country’s foreign policy, which he says has too long been overly favourable of Washington.