RJ Nieto from the website Thinking Pinoy published on Sturday an article which argued that the number of deaths associated with President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war are not accurate.
Nieto mentioned the number used by Rappler in Michael Bueza’s “IN NUMBERS: The Philippines' 'war on drugs’”, which supposedly serves as a tally of the deaths resulting from President Rody Duterte’s War on Drugs.
Bueza on the latest update on the story, used data from PNP and came up with a total of 7,080 casualties by combining 2,555; 3,603; and 922, which are the deaths from police operations, DUIs, and concluded investigations, respectively.
This number has been used in international news agencies as basis for the death toll on the drug war.
This was used in Newsweek, the Guardina, New York Times, Human Rughts Watch and a European Parliament reslution.
Vice President Leni Robredo used this number in her messae to the United Nations.
Ambassador Rigoberto Tiglao was also quoted in the article to have written that, "The Rappler report is so patently wrong, I can only attribute it not to stupidity but to malice. It included 4,525 ‘deaths under investigation or investigation concluded’ as killings related to the anti-drug war – which they aren’t!”"
Nieto also said that Death Under Investigations should not have been included in the count as there is no proof yet that these were drug-related.
PNP Police S/Supt. Dionardo "Caloy" Carlos said, "The media reports over 7,000 extrajudicial killings and/or summary executions, that’s their description, but we only have 6,011 homicide cases recorded from 01 July 2016 to 24 March 2017. These (homicide cases are) formerly (called) DUIs, or deaths under investigation,"
"It’s wrong to say that all 6,011 are EJKs or summary killings (executions) because the circumstances surrounding each of the 6,011 deaths differ. The motives vary," Carlos added.
Nieto adds that First, the 828 deaths that are not related to drugs are obviously not part of the War on Drugs.Second, the 1398 drug-related deaths may be EJKs or summary executions, but it is still unclear if the killings were state-sanctioned.Third, the remaining 3,785 DUIs are still being investigated upon, so it is still unknown if they’re related to drugs or not.
Nieto noted that subtracting 1,398 drug-related and 828 non-drug-related deaths from the 6,011 DUIs yields 3,785 DUIs with pending investigations.
SOURCE: Thinking Pinoy
