Press Release
August 19, 2017

Minority senators demand an end to drug killings

The minority bloc demands that the Senate stand in solidarity against the senseless killings that claimed over 80 Filipinos, including a 17-year-old Grade 11 student Kian Loyd Delos Santos, in just 4 days.

Sen. Sonny Trillanes said he will call for an all-Senators caucus on Tuesday to bring to the fore the alarming resurgence of drug related killings by the PNP.

"Sobra na. Maling mali na talaga to. I cannot, in conscience, let this pass. The Senators should have a united stand to stop this," declared Trillanes.

Shocked by the death of an innocent teenager in Caloocan City, Sen. Bam Aquino insists that the government rethink its strategy, saying the poor and helpless are casualties in this war while those involved in big drug cases are accorded due process.

"I plan to file a resolution kasi nakababahala na talaga iyong news reports," said Sen. Aquino.

"We cannot tolerate the alarming police impunity in the country. We need to investigate these killings of alleged drug suspects including a Grade 11 student in police operations," Sen. Franklin Drilon echoed.

Drilon earlier questioned Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre at the 2018 budget hearing for their failure to investigate extra judicial killings, with only 37 of about 4,000 deaths related to the anti-drug campaign were investigated.

Meanwhile, Sen. Francis Pangilinan was enraged that the poor are marked as a target while more than P6 billion worth of illegal drugs can slip past the Bureau of Customs (BOC) unnoticed.

"Ang ugat ng problema sa droga ay doon nakita sa pagpuslit ng tonetoneladang shabu sa BoC ng mga sindikato kasabwat ang mga opisyal ng gobyerno," said Pangilinan.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros urged the government to stop the extrajudicial killings, saying the Duterte administration cannot kill its way out of the drug problem.

"We refuse to accept these killings as normal," said Hontiveros.

Sen. Leila de Lima also criticized Duterte for praising the deadly Bulacan raids, which killed 32 people, saying, "Those are clear words of a deranged mind. If you say that it's good to kill 32 people a day - that's a deranged mind."

Over 80 of our countrymen were killed in Manila, Bulacan and in the Camanava (Caloocan-Malabon-Navotas-Valenzuela) area in the span of 4 days, all in the name of the PNP's anti-drug and anti-crime operations.

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