In December 2020, police killed nine members of an Indigenous people’s community on the island of Panay, in the central Philippines. Human rights groups rejected claims that the victims were rebels or rebel supporters. The simultaneous police raids occurred two days after President Duterte publicly ordered law enforcement officials to “finish off” communist insurgents. All those killed were previously accused of communist involvement. In March, nine individuals belonging to different activist groups were killed during police raids in the Calabarzon region south of Manila. Government and military officials often “ red-tag” such individuals through announcements and social media, putting them at grave risk of attack. During counter-insurgency operations against the New People’s Army (NPA), government security forces frequently targeted leftist activists, including peasant leaders, environmentalists, human rights lawyers, and Indigenous group heads, among others. The country’s 52-year-long communist insurgency continued in 2021. Responding to this criticism, the department released in October a preliminary report affirming that police were culpable in at least 52 cases and promised to investigate further. The Justice Department investigation has faced criticism for repeated delays, lack of transparency, and refusal to involve the national Commission on Human Rights in its review. In most of the cases the Department of Justice reviewed, police also failed to follow standard protocols in the coordination of drug raids and in the processing of crime scene evidence. In many cases, police made no effort to examine allegedly recovered weapons, verify ownership, or conduct ballistic examinations. This followed its admission before the UN Human Rights Council, in February, that officers failed to follow protocols during these operations. The Department of Justice, which announced, in June 2020, the creation of a panel that would review deaths in the “drug war” attributed to police officers, said, in September 2021, that it was now investigating 52 cases involving 154 police officers implicated in questionable killings. The decision echoed claims by various rights groups that between 12,000 and 30,000 people have been killed in the “drug war.” The government’s own data shows more than 6,190 people were killed in police operations from 2016 to August 2021. In its decision to greenlight the investigation, the pre-trial chamber stated the government’s anti-drug campaign “cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation, and the killings neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation.” It further said there has been “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population” as part of a state policy. In September, a pre-trial chamber of the ICC granted the prosecutor’s request to open a formal investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in the Philippines from the time the country ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute on November 1, 2011, until its withdrawal from the treaty on March 16, 2019. Journalists covering the insurgency or investigating abuses and corruption also face harassment and violence. Many of those red-tagged are subsequently killed. Killings of civilians and “red-tagging”-accusing activists and others of being combatants or supporters of the communist New People’s Army-are endemic to the government’s counterinsurgency campaign. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, consider the program inadequate, and continue to call for an independent international investigation. In July, the Philippine government and the United Nations launched a joint “human rights program” to address human rights violations and accountability failings in the country, reflecting domestic and international concerns about “drug war” killings. In October, Maria Ressa, the co-founder and executive editor of the news website Rappler, won the Nobel Peace Prize for defending media freedom, specifically for resisting the Duterte government’s attempts to muzzle the press. On September 15, the International Criminal Court (ICC) agreed to open a formal investigation into possible “crimes against humanity” committed during President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” from 2016 to 2019, and extrajudicial executions committed in Davao City in the southern Philippines from 2011 to 2016, when Duterte was mayor. Serious human rights abuses continued in the Philippines in 2021.
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