Peter Cruz, 24, lies dead on the pavement after being gunned down while he was biking by unknown assailants on Guyabano street in Manggahan, Pasig City on Tuesday. Unexplained killings continue even as President Duterte ordered the halt in police operations against drug suspects on Monday. Fernando G. Sepe Jr., ABS-CBN News

Senator Alan Peter Cayetano has denied that the Duterte's administration war on drugs is a war against poor people in the Philippines, as claimed by Amnesty International.

In a speech before the Filipino community in New York City on Monday (Philippine time), Cayetano said the Duterte administration's policy against drugs and criminality actually aims to alleviate poverty since "no family with a drug addict as a brother, son, or father can get out of poverty."

"The poor have become common victims of the drug pushers. When they become hooked on drugs, they engage in other crimes to sustain their vices. If the government will not intensify its drug operations, the poor will continue to be exploited by the drug pushers. The poor cannot defend themselves, they need us most," he said.

Cayetano also called on international organizations to help the Duterte administration in its war against drugs instead of "wasting their energy criticizing its strong policies."

""Instead of criticizing us and trying to stop international funding, why don't you give us bullet-proof vests for our police? And why don't you give us cameras like they use in the SEAL teams, so you could see the drug bust and you could see why they fire at these people?"

In its report "If you are poor you are killed: Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines", Amnesty International detailed how the Philippine police have systematically targeted mostly poor and defenseless people across the country while "planting evidence, recruiting paid killers, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports."

In a number of cases witnesses to killings or victims' relatives told Amnesty that the person shot dead was unarmed and had not resisted arrest. Police also planted drugs and weapons that they later "seized" as evidence, Amnesty said.

Amnesty also warned that the lists of drug suspects that police were using to target people were deeply flawed.

This was partly because many people were placed on the lists simply after being reported by fellow community members, without any further investigation, according to Amnesty.

After a series of scandals emerged over the past month in which police were caught committing murder, kidnapping, extortion and robbery, President Duterte week ordered them to stop all activities related to the drug war.

He described the police force as "corrupt to the core" and vowed to cleanse it.

But he also vowed the drug war would continue until the last day of his term, in 2022.

He said police would return to the drug war after he reorganized the force and, in the meantime, the military would become more involved. With Agence France Presse

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War on drugs not war vs poor: Cayetano - ABS-CBN News