THUS ordered Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Oscar Albayalde to two police officials to coordinate with the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) following a release of a study showing the government’s war against illegal drugs to be violative of human rights.
The research took a close look at the legal framework of Oplan Tokhang and found that its circulars contain open statements that “afford state agents the latitude if not discretion that render our human rights vulnerable.”
The PNP anti-drug operations, the study says, found a pattern of human rights violations—including right to privacy, information, due process, presumption of innocence, rights against illegal search, and self-incrimination.
Albayalde responded, “As we have said, we are willing to listen and engage all sectors, including the academe, that are concerned and willing to assist the PNP in the fight against illegal drugs.”
The research and Albayalde’s response come at a time when, in Cebu, everyone’s eyes are on a viral video showing alleged Talamban policemen beating up a suspected drug pusher in a raid in Carreta on April 18, 2019. Six fully-armed men mauled drug suspect Eddie Basillote and two others, while Basillote’s wife, pregnant and then carrying a baby, watched. This was all caught by the security camera in Basillote’s house. And there was Basillote’s niece, a minor, as well who witnessed the whole act.
Albayalde’s message of reaching out to sectors also comes at a time when the Talamban Police clams up against the request of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) for access to the blotter and police report on the arrest of Basillote.
This policy is one shadow former PNP chief and now senatorial candidate Ronald Bato dela Rosa had cast through a 2017 PNP directive not to share documents with the CHR.
If Albayalde is, indeed, bent on opening up the PNP to sectoral engagement, then by all means the CHR should be at the forefront of this partnership. If the PNP is serious in its work of internal cleansing, it would need the CHR to check if its men are enforcing the law as neatly as the law wants it to be.
But as long as our local PNP offices continue to evade proper media inquiry and leave the Cebuanos perpetually in the dark as far as their operations are concerned, there will always be public mistrust and suspicion. Get in touch? No, you, sirs, are out of