MANILA: Police in the Philippines on Monday resumed President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, making visits to the homes of users and dealers to convince them to surrender, but the national police chief said he could not promise a bloodless campaign.
The announcement came as the justice department filed its first criminal case against police officers in the battle against drugs, bolstering human rights activists’ accusations of fabricated accounts of shoot-outs with drug suspects.
The program of visits, known as “Oplan Tokhang,” made a comeback with an assurance from police chief Ronaldo dela Rosa that it should be free of violence if offenders agreed to go quietly and did not resist.
But he could not promise a “foolproof anti-drug campaign that would be bloodless,” Dela Rosa added, as the police were “not dealing with people who are in their proper state of mind.”
In the dialect of Duterte’s southern hometown of Davao, “Tokhang” is a combination of the words “knock” and “plead.”
Besides the visits, police have also run so-called “buy-bust” or sting operations and raided suspected drug dens and illicit laboratories.
In many of these operations, say rights activists, suspects did not get the chance to surrender, but were executed in cold blood instead. But police insist suspects died because they violently resisted arrest.
Nearly 4,000 drug suspects have died in gunbattles with police since June 2016, when Duterte came to power. The government lost 85 police and soldiers in the drugs war, police data show.
More than 1.2 million people had also turned themselves in after the home visits.
Duterte has stopped police anti-drugs operations twice due to questions over the conduct of the force, including the killing of a teenager in a supposed anti-drug operation.
On Monday, the Department of Justice filed murder charges and two drug-related cases against three police officers who killed the teenager, Kian Loyd delos Santos, after witnesses disputed the police version of the killing.
National police spokesman Dionardo Carlos said the force welcomed the filing.
“The police officers have to face their accusers in court and prove their innocence, they have to follow the procedures,” he said, urging due process for the officers.
To ensure transparency, Dela Rosa invited human rights advocates, priests and the media to join the relaunched program of home visits.
The police officers involved would also undergo a vetting process to weed out “rogue” officers, said Dela Rosa, adding that past abuses had involved the police seeking bribes to drop the names of people from the lists they compiled.
Philippine police resume war on drugs, cannot promise to avoid bloodshed
Philippine police resume war on drugs, cannot promise to avoid bloodshed
Mine collapse in eastern Congo leaves 200 dead, authorities say, but rebels dispute the number
- Senior M23 official Fanny Kaj disputed the figure, saying that the collapse was caused by “bombings”
- Ibrahim Taluseke, a miner at the site, said that he had helped to recover more than 200 bodies from the area
GOMA, Congo: A mine collapse at a major coltan mining site in eastern Congo left at least 200 dead, according to Congolese authorities, a number disputed by the rebel group that controls the mine.
The collapse took place Tuesday at the Rubaya mines, which are controlled by the M23 rebel group, Congo’s Ministry of Mines said in a statement on Wednesday. It was the latest such tragedy in the mineral-rich and rebel-controlled territories of the country.
But senior M23 official Fanny Kaj disputed the figure, saying that the collapse was caused by “bombings” and only five people had been killed.
“I can confirm that what people are publishing is not true. There was no landslide; there were bombings, and the death toll isn’t what people are saying. It’s simply about five people who died,” Kaj said.
Ibrahim Taluseke, a miner at the site, said that he had helped to recover more than 200 bodies from the area.
“We are afraid, but these are lives that are in danger,” said Taluseke. “The owners of the pits do not accept that the exact number of deaths be revealed.”
Rubaya lies in the heart of eastern Congo, a mineral-rich part of the Central African nation which for decades has been ripped apart by violence from government forces and different armed groups, including the Rwanda-backed M23 group, whose recent resurgence has escalated the conflict, worsening an already acute humanitarian crisis.
Congo is a major supplier of coltan, a black metallic ore that contains the rare metal tantalum, a key component in the production of smartphones, computers and aircraft engines.
The country produced about 40 percent of the world’s coltan in 2023, according to the US Geological Survey, with Australia, Canada and Brazil being other big suppliers. More than 15 percent of the world’s supply of tantalum comes from Rubaya’s mines.
In May 2024, M23 seized the town and took control of its mines. According to a UN report, since seizing Rubaya, the rebels have imposed taxes on the trade and transport of coltan, generating at least $800,000 a month.
Eastern Congo has been in and out of crisis for decades. Various conflicts have created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises with more than 7 million people displaced, including more than 300,000 who have fled their homes since December.
In June, the Congolese and Rwandan government signed a peace deal brokered by the US and negotiations continue between rebels and Congo. However, fighting continues on several fronts in eastern Congo, continuing to claim numerous civilian and military casualties.
The deal between Congo and Rwanda also opens up access to critical minerals for the US government and American companies.
A similar collapse last month killed more than 200 people.
