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Aguirre on AI report: ‘Drug lords, addicts not part of humanity’ 


Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II on Wednesday downplayed an Amnesty International (AI) report that said the spate of drug-related killings under the Duterte administration could constitute crimes against humanity.

“‘Yung mga criminals, yung mga drug lords, drug pushers, they are not the humanity. Hindi sila ang humanity,” Aguirre told reporters in an interview.

“How can that be when your war is only against drug lords, drug addicts, drug pushers? You consider them humanity? No. I believe not,” he added.

According to Amnesty, the recent killings appear to be “systematic, planned and organized” by authorities and could constitute crimes against humanity.

It said the vast majority of the killings it investigated "appear to have been extra-judicial killings - unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by government order or with its complicity or acquiescence".

"The Duterte administration's relentless pressure on the police to deliver results in anti-drug operations has helped encourage these abusive practices," the report said.

Some 7,000 people, most of them drug suspects, have been killed in the government's anti-drug war, some by policemen in operations and others by suspected vigilantes. —KBK, GMA News

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