How many people have died as a result of Duterte's drug war? That is not as straightforward a question as you may think. What does it mean exactly? What is being asked? Are we asking how many have died as a result of police operations? Are we including how many have died as a result of vigilantes? Are we asking how many drug dealers and users have died? Or are we asking about innocent bystanders as well? It all depends on who you ask.
The official government tally as of July 2019 is exactly 5,526.
The number of drug suspects killed in anti-drug operations has reached 5,526, data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) showed Thursday.
Another 193,063 drug personalities, meanwhile, have been arrested in 134,583 operations conducted nationwide.
The data which covered July 2016 until June 2019 were disclosed during the Real Numbers PH presentation that aims to clarify data on the drug war, amid the 27,000 deaths that human rights groups allege could be related to the drive against the illegal drug trade.
This also clarifies the 6,600 deaths earlier reported in the unofficial data of the Philippine National Police (PNP). This earlier figure has not yet been verified with PDEA.
The PDEA says only 5,526 people have died as a result of the drug war. But they are only counting deaths from police operations. This number is also lower than the number PNP Chief Albalyde gave just a day earlier which the PDEA calls "unofficial data!" The data from the PDEA is dated July 18th. Let's go back to one day before, July 17th.
You must go to the link and watch that brief clip. PNP Chief Albayalde quotes from PNP statistics and gives a very specific number which the PDEA contradicts the next day. Not only do they contradict it but they call it "unofficial data" even though it is official PNP data! This official PNP data was confirmed just a month earlier on June 18th, 2019.
At least 6,600 suspected drug offenders have been killed in police operations since President Duterte took office in 2016, the Philippine National Police (PNP) reported yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Ma-o Aplasca, chief of the PNP Directorate for Operations, said the suspects were killed in alleged shootouts with police officers from July 1, 2016 to May 31, 2019. Aplasca presented the report during a command conference at PNP headquarters at Camp Crame in Quezon City.
The report said 240,565 suspected pushers and users were arrested in the same period. PNP chief General Oscar Albayalde presided over the meeting attended by regional police commanders and heads of national support units.
6,600 is official PNP data. Was it just a joke? Why should we disbelieve them when they are at the forefront of the drug war? Surely their numbers are as good as gold? It is very believable that the number was 6,600 at the end of May and increased to 6,739 a month later. This is still 1,000 more deaths the the official PDEA figure. Why the difference? Why do the PNP and PDEA contradict one another?
Two months before that in April Ateneo University released their findings and came up with a comeptley different number.
More than 7,000 drug suspects—mostly poor, male breadwinners from Metro Manila—have been shot dead during the course of the Duterte administration’s three-year war on drugs, according to Drug Archive, an independent listing of alleged extrajudicial killings nationwide.
The Ateneo School of Government on Friday released the updated number of drug-related killings from the Drug Archive, the academe-led database prepared by Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University and the University of the Philippines, which was launched in 2017.
7,000 is more than the PDEA and PNP's official tallies. How is it that their numbers are more than the official government numbers but less than those of various human rights organisations which allege many more deaths have occurred? How is it that the Durg Archive, which is "compiled and validated through news reports," records 7,000 deaths between May 2016 and December 2018 but Rappler reported 7,000 deaths back in 2017?
Rappler, along with other news outfits, presented a tally of 7,000 deaths as of April 2017 but clarified that the number is cumulative of all the deaths linked to the war on drugs. They are both deaths from legitimate police operations and deaths from vigilante-style or unexplained killings.
Rappler's 7,000 includes deaths from police and assassins. But so does the Drug Archive.
Most of the reported killings -- 4,152 people or 59 percent of the total -- involved police operations, while 2,469 individuals or 35 percent were "killed by assailant." A relatively small fraction, 402 people making up 5.7 percent, consisted of bodies discovered or found.
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/692540/over-7-000-drug-related-killings-as-of-dec-2018-ateneo-policy-center/story/
It is the tally of those deaths, deaths from assassins and unexplained killings, that have caused a lot of the confusion over the official kill count. The official terms used for such deaths related to the drug war but not as a result of police operations are "Death Under Investigation" and "Homicide Cases Under Investigation." It is the number of those deaths that have pushed the kill count to over 20,000.
“The drug policies in place in the Philippines, and its lack of respect for rule of law and international standards, should not be considered a model by any country,” she later added.
Sought for comment, Malacañang said on Thursday that the figures Ms. Bachelet was citing on the number of drug-related deaths at 27,000 was wrong.
“The problem with that statement coming from that UN official is that… she relies on what she receives (as) information coming from the critics and the detractors of the administration. And we have been saying that this information is wrong. Like, for instance, when she claims that there were 27,000 deaths, the official count is only 5,000,” presidential spokesperson Salvador S. Panelo said during a Palace briefing.
These numbers are from March 2019. Bachelet says 27,000 Panelo says 5,000. Where did she get the number 27,000 from? Official government statistics of course.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) has recorded a total of 22,983 cases of killings that were classified as deaths under inquiry (DUI) since President Duterte launched the war on drugs.
In a report, the PNP Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM) said at least 33 persons were killed daily from July 1, 2016 until May 21 this year.
Earlier, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar said the #RealNumberPH was the consolidated numbers in the administration’s accomplishment against illegal drugs.
“These are real numbers that we need to know, the others are either false, misinformation or fake,” he said.
Those numbers are from May 2018 so of course they are less than any numbers from 2019. What's important to note is that PCOO Secretary Andanar tells us that #RealNumbers PH is the official tally. But does the PCOO really believe that? No. They don't.
The Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) on Tuesday said the total number of homicides cases under investigation (HCUIs), under the "Fighting Against Illegal Drugs" chapter in its 2017 accomplishment report, were included to create a distinction on the number of deaths that were all related to the administration's anti-illegal drugs operations.
"We included the figures on homicide cases under investigation when we published real numbers to make it clear that there is a different number which is directly related to deaths during drug operations since the opposition had been insisting on the numbers most convenient for them to push their political agenda," Assistant Secretary Marie Rafael said in a phone interview.
From another article we read:
The PCOO reiterated that the numbers under homicide cases under investigation (HCUI) “are not at all related to the anti-illegal drugs campaign.”
“We are not contradicting these data; in fact, we have been updating these data. May we reiterate that these homicide cases under investigation are not at all related to the anti-illegal drugs campaign,” PCOO said.
“HCUI may have resulted out of road rage, land dispute, business rivalry, family dispute, love triangle, crimes of passion or politics, what may be considered as drug-related incidents are those where the victim is killed by non- government elements because he/she is an alleged informant or the victim is killed and/or raped and killed by a person who uses drugs,” it added.
If HCUIs are not related to the drug war then why include them in that data? Here is the controversial page in question from The Duterte Administration Year-End Report 2017 Key Accomplishments report.
No reasonable reading of this report would lead one to believe that the 16,355 HCUIs are anything but related to the drug war. The numbers are on a page titled "Fighting Illegal Drugs." If people are confused about the #RealNumbers the
PNP have themselves to blame for appending the dubious label "Deaths Under Investigation" to unsolved homicides and including those numbers in the drug war data.
So it's entirely disingenuous when PNP Chief Albayalde mocks those who use official data from #RealNumbers.
(Can we have a list of names of these 27,000 deaths that they always bring up? Show us the list, the names, and we will gladly investigate all of these if those numbers are true.)
Has anyone presented a list of the names of the dead? I don't think so. But dear readers I happen to have a list of the names of all the people who have died in the drug war using official PNP and PDEA data. Here they are:
That's all of them. Where are the names you ask? Well you see names belong to people and no people have died during the drug war because drug users and dealers are not people!
“The criminals, the drug lords, drug pushers, they are not humanity. They are not humanity,” Aguirre told reporters when asked to comment on the Amnesty report.
“In other words, how can that be when your war is only against those drug lords, drug addicts, drug pushers. You consider them humanity? I do not.”
“Ang tingin ko dun pa lang sa charge, hindi pwede, eh. Pag sinabi mong ‘crimes against humanity,’ eh sino ba yung humanity na binabanggit?…Humanity ba ang drug pusher at mga abusadong drug user (I think that the charge can’t be. When you say ‘crimes against humanity,’ who is the humanity being mentioned? Are drug pushers and stubborn drug users considered part of humanity)?” Sotto said in a radio interview this afternoon.
Sotto continued on, saying “Kung sagot nila oo, aba, eh isa sila run o suportado nila ang mga yun (If their answer is yes, then they’re either one of them or they support them).”
“That’s why I said, ‘[W]hat crime against humanity?’ In the first place, I’d like to be frank with you, are they (drug users) humans? What is your definition of a human being? Tell me,” he said.
The numbers may vary on how many have been killed in the drug war but it is a fact that since drug users and drug dealers are not human no people have died as a result of Duterte's drug war.
But remember, they reset the body count to zero back in 2017 or 2018 when it got too high and people started asking questions.
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