A DAY after Malacañang claimed that drug lords may have been using human rights groups as "unwitting tools" to undermine the government's war on drugs, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said it would look into the allegation.
Derrick Arnold Carreon, PDEA spokesperson, concurred with the statement of Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. issued Monday, March 26.
"There might be a possibility that our enemies are taking advantage because of course, any damage or attack against the campaign (to curb the drug menace) is, of course, advantageous to the other side," Carreon told Palace reporters.
"Of course, that is still subject to further investigation by all law enforcement agencies. But seeing the trend of how they attack the anti-drug campaign, I guess we can only surmise that it might be unwitting to the human rights groups that they are being capitalized or made as leverage by drug group," he added.
Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesperson Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao, who joined Carreon at the press briefing, said the police would coordinate with the PDEA to validate reports about the drug lords' latest move against the current administration.
The allegation was first made by Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano on Sunday. He said human rights organizations are not aware that they are being used by drug lords to discredit President Rodrigo Duterte's anti-narcotics drive.
Rights groups and other progressive organizations have been protesting the alleged extrajudicial killings of drug suspects under Duterte's war on drugs.
Roque, in his statement on Monday, said drug lords want to "continue to do and thrive in the drug business," thus are making ways to destabilize the Duterte administration's efforts to fight against illegal drugs.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch belied Monday the "dangerous" and "baseless" accusations of the two Philippine officials, saying that such pronouncement was merely meant to "(undermine) the integrity of already beleaguered Philippine human rights activitists" who are against Duterte's drug war.
Local rights group Karapatan also issued a statement Tuesday, March 27, warning that such allegation means that Malacañang could be "cooking up a scenario that will justify a massive tokhang-style killing of activists or it is one of those attempts to evade accountability from domestic and international human rights instruments."
Karapatan lamented that it was one of the "fantastic tales and labels" that the Palace never seems to run out of.
Carreon said the PDEA and other law enforcement agencies would not allow anyone to undermine the crackdown on the rampant narcotics trade, which he said is being conducted "according to the rule of law."
He said the anti-drug lead agency would "dig further on the claim of Roque and Cayetano."
"Any damage to the campaign affects our efforts somehow. They want to cast doubt when in fact, adjustments have been made on the ground by our agency, by our main counterpart, the PNP, and we'd like to stand by the regularity of our (anti-drug) operations," he said.
"We have made adjustments on the ground, in order that we would not be criticized negatively in regard to the conduct of such operations... We have been adjusting as well, in order to dispel notions that operations are conducted with any kind of irregularities," he added. (SunStar Philippines)