In denouncing United Nations (UN) special rapporteur Agnes Callamard’s assessment of the human rights situation in the country in relation to the government’s relentless war against illegal drugs, Sen. Vicente Sotto III cited as an example the rape of a four-month-old baby by a known junkie in Carcar City, Cebu.
Specifically, the rape case involving a certain Jonathan Marfe who allegedly took the baby from her mother’s home and raped her before midnight. Marfe had a record of drug use and sexual assault, and a bottle of coconut wine was found at the crime scene.
The senator, who has been quite active in the campaign against illegal drugs long before President Rodrigo Duterte came to power, also disputed Callamard’s claims that shabu use doesn’t damage the brain contrary to the President’s statements, but he didn’t cite any specific scientific evidence to support his contention.
What is known is that the Duterte administration’s war on drugs had claimed thousands of casualties who were mostly low-level drug users and pushers with little to no access to lawyers and legal assistance.
The latest chapter in the war against illegal drugs again cast a spotlight to Cebu where businessman and suspected drug lord Peter Lim and now businessman Kenneth Dong live and do business in.
After being threatened with death by President Duterte, it’s only now that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had taken an active interest anew in Lim, who had been freely moving about within and outside the country contrary to previous warnings that he will be killed the minute he leaves and returns to the Philippines.
Just as difficult and elusive to prosecute was Dong, whose ties to the billion-peso shabu shipment from China are being investigated by the police.
It’s not hard to condemn the inequality between the slow turtle-pace prosecution of suspected drug lords and the ease with which low-level drug pushers and users are either arrested or snuffed out.
Then again, the Duterte administration would point out the recent deaths of Ozamiz City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and some of his family along with the execution-style death of Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa as evidence that there is no favoritism whatsoever in the war against illegal drugs.
Again, we repeatedly return to the argument that while there is no doubt about the evils and harm posed by the continued sale and use of illegal drugs, it’s the extreme methods employed by the Duterte administration that had caused the global community to sit up and pay attention to, unfavorably to say the least.
While administration officials continually dismiss Callamard and other UN rapporteurs by labeling them “parachute investigators,” their assessments still carry weight and will continually hound the Duterte administration before the global community so long as the deaths continue to pile up.