Daily Archives: February 6, 2017

Sunday February 5 2017 In Summary

The government will not relent in its efforts to eradicate drug and drug use in the coastal region, Deputy President William Ruto said on Sunday.

Speaking after attending mass at the Holy Ghost Cathedral Catholic Church, Mr Ruto expressed concern over high number of youths succumbing to drug addiction.

You should pray for those indulging in this illegal business to change their way of lives and stop destroying our young people here (Mombasa), he added.

Acknowledging that the government was facing challenges in fighting the drug menace, Mr Ruto asked Christians to join hands in the fight against the vice to save the youths.

The DP's statements follow the extradition of four suspected drug barons to the United States to face trafficking charges.

Joint investigations between Kenyan police and Drug Enforcement Administration led to the arrest of Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, Gulam Hussein, Vijaygiri Anandgiri Goswami and Baktash Akasha Abdalla.

At the same time, he urged Christians to offer special prayers to Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials to conduct free, fair and credible polls on August 8.

All of us as Kenyans require the space and chance to exercise our constitutional rights to vote for whoever we want without being coerced or intimidated through unorthodox means to vote otherwise, he said.

The DP noted that security had improved in the coastal region which had come under terror attacks due to intensified surveillance by security forces within and without the borders.

We must pay homage to our security forces for ensuring peace and tranquility prevail not only in Mombasa and its environs but the entire country and within our borders, he said.

According to him, even after this years elections and its outcome, Kenyans would still remain peaceful.

In his sermon, the presiding Priest John Correa challenged the government to resolve the doctors strike impasse saying most Kenyans were suffering due to lack of health services.

Whether we are leaders, politicians, government and priests we should work in solidarity to break the impasse and bring back healthcare services to public hospitals, he pleaded.

He also urged Catholic faithful to donate foodstuff to help residents suffering in drought and famine hit counties across the country.

Americas FBI had sought the Akashas for a long time.

Most of the soldiers who fought in that battle were at the camp.

Justice Odunga added that the Sports Act does not bestow the CS with such power.

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State to push on with drugs war Ruto - VIDEO - Daily Nation - Daily Nation

MANILA - Philippine troops will only provide back-up in the war on drugs and not patrol the streets or play any kind of leading role, the head of an anti-narcotics agency that has been given charge of the campaign said on Monday.

Last week, President Rodrigo Duterte suspended the national police from the anti-drugs war that has killed over 7,600 people in seven months after a South Korean businessman was kidnapped and killed by members of a police drugs squad.

He said the army would be inducted into the drugs war, creating unease in a country that endured a decade of martial law from the early 1970s and where memories of campaigns to restore democracy and protect human rights are fresh in the minds of many people.

However, Duterte handed charge of the anti-drugs campaign to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

"They (troops) will be in support of PDEA agents," the agency's director general, Isidro Lapena, said in an interview. "For example, if the target is in an area where there are armed groups, then we will be needing the armed forces."

Lapena stressed the military would not be on patrol duty or lead their own operations. Troops selected for a joint task force with the PDEA would attend orientation programs and would likely only be on stand-by for drug operations when needed.

Of the people killed in the war on drugs, about 2,500 died during police operations and the remainder are in dispute. The authorities say many deaths were caused by inter-gang violence or vigilantes, while human rights groups say there is a pattern of extra-judicial killings. The government strongly rejects that.

Asked if a drugs war run by PDEA would see fewer killings than those seen under the police, Lapena said it was up to the criminal gangs to decide whether to surrender quietly, or put up a fight.

"There are firefights that result in death...we cannot avoid that," he said.

BLOODSHED INEVITABLE

Lapena said most previous operations led by the PDEA had resulted in arrests, not killings. Bloodshed was inevitable during a drugs war, he said, because dealers and corrupt police would kill others to cover their tracks.

"We don't have control over other elements who do the killings. The other killings are perpetrated, I would say, by drug syndicates themselves," Lapena said.

"That is why, I cannot say this will lower, or this will rise."

The remit and structure of the new joint task force between the PDEA and the armed forces could be finalized within this week, Lapena said.

PDEA has a major challenge in keeping up the intensity of a drugs war that was being waged primarily by the 160,000-strong Philippine National Police (PNP).

PDEA has a tiny fraction of that, with only 1,800 personnel. Lapena said PDEA had approval to recruit 900 more. The new task force would operate nationwide, but its size and number of operations was yet to be decided.

Lapena said PDEA would make up for the manpower shortage by strengthening links to local communities, setting up anti-drugs councils to identify those in need of rehabilitation, or "neutralization", which he said meant arrests and prosecution, and was not a euphemism for killing.

Lapena is a former police chief of Davao, a city where Duterte was mayor for over two decades.

The narcotics agency chief said he had no idea why Duterte would make such drastic change to his drugs war, leaving PDEA with a race against time to come up with a plan.

"We will take on the job and we will deliver," he said.

See more here:

PDEA: Army to play support role in war on drugs - ABS-CBN News

Gener Rondina never stood a chance. When the Philippine police arrived at his home in the middle of the night, he tried to push an air conditioner out of the wall and flee through the opening. The police were waiting on the other side and shone a flashlight on his face.

Terrified, he retreated inside, began pleading for his life, and offered himself up for arrest. Family members saidhe had been trying to quit his use and small-scale sale of drugs. I will surrender, I will surrender, sir, a witness said Rondina shouted. The police told Rondina to get on his knees and hold his hands over his head. They told his family to leave the room. Moments later, gunshots rang out.

Rondina is one of more than7,000 people whohavebeen killed in the Philippines war on drugsover the past seven months.Since President Rodrigo Duterte swept to power, on a platform of uplifting the poor and ridding the streets of crime, he has incited people with his murderous rhetoric to take the law into their own hands and kill anyone they suspect of using or selling drugs.

The Philippine police claimed, as they did in the vast majority of casesAmnesty International documented, that Rondina resisted arrest. The witnesses we spoke to told a different story, that of an unarmed man stricken with fear in what he knew were the final moments of his life. When he was killed, a witness said the police dragged him outside like a pig and left his corpse by a sewer before loading it into a truck.

Every day, families arrive at morgues in the Philippines to search for the dumped bodies of their loved ones. The victims are overwhelmingly from the poorest sections of society. They are not powerful drug traffickers or leaders of drug syndicates, but people whose names were added to hit lists by local political bosses on suspicion that they used or sold drugs, no matter how little or how long ago.

The killings have become so common that there is almost a casual air of business at the morgues and funeral homes. The police and other officials look on indifferently as they process paperwork, unmoved by the relentless loss of human life. The only value they attach to them is as commodities in an economy of murder. Dignity for the victims is even denied in deathone officer speaking to us said some police officers have entered into a racket with local funeral homes, taking a cut for each body sent their way.

As a Metro Manila anti-drugs police officer revealed to us, the police are paid per hit by their bosses. These under-the-table payments can be as much as $300 for each alleged drug offender they kill. As a result, there is no incentive to arrest people like Rondina and submit them to due process. When there is a shootout during a drugs raid, the police officer said, an alleged drug offender is always killed.

Safe in the knowledge that they will not be held accountable for the killings, the police prey on victims in other ways. During a raid, several people told us, they often plant evidence even as they snatch possessions.Rondinasfather, who himself served on the police force for 24 years before retiring, said the police took a laptop, a watch, a cell phone and cash after they killed his son. (On Monday, police chief RonalddelaRosaconceded that there is corruption in the forceand said they will cleanse the ranks.)

There are times when the police prefer to operate in secret. Trading in their uniforms for disguises, they roam the streets on motorcycles in pairs. Riding in tandem, as it is known locally, they approach their target, kill them, and speed away. This way, they haveno questions to confront, and no paperwork to fill inor reports to falsify.

At other times, the policerecruit paid killersto do their dirty work for them. As two paid killers we spoke to said, theyre managed by an active police officer. Their gang includes a number of former police officers. For a user, one of the paid killers told us, its 5,000 pesos (US$100). For a pusher, she added, it can be twice or three times as much.

Following the police killing of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-jooon the grounds of the national police headquarters, Duterte said he was disbanding the polices anti-drug unit. But he has vowed to press ahead with his violent campaign, until the end of his term in 2022. The problem is not just a few police officers, but the policy as a whole, which will continue to claim lives.

On Tuesday night, a day after the police said they had abandoned their anti-narcotics operations, the body of 24-year-old Aldrin de Guzman was found near his home. The killers left him out on the street, in what has become a hauntingly familiar sight for Filipinos. Each morning, people walk along the streets, past the bodies, touched by the fear the killers left for them.

Its a fear that now pervades every impoverishedneighbourhoodin the archipelago, where residents worry that they or a loved one may be next. The same police thataresupposed to protect them are hunting them down, acting on the instructions of the president who was supposed to be their greatest champion. If you are poor, as one victims relative told us, you are killed.

Originally posted here:

Philippines: Duterte must end his "war on drugs" - Amnesty International

Father Amando Picardal does not flinch from the enormity of the question. As a priest in Metro Manila, he's confronted nightly with the bloodshed of President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war, which police say has now claimed more than 7,000 lives.

Picardal refuses to place that toll at God's doorstep.

He says there is a "blood lust" in the country, encouraged by propaganda, deceit and a President with "a messiah complex." At the Baclaran Church in the capital, he preaches against the killings.

Religion is an incredibly powerful force in this overwhelmingly Catholic country, and many of its adherents here attend Mass regularly.

"We have to put a stop to (the killings). Because if this continues it will destroy us as a country, as a nation," Picardal says.

This criticism from within the Catholic Church has not gone unnoticed by the notoriously outspoken President, with Duterte delivering an escalating set of verbal attacks against the Church in recent weeks.

He brought up the child abuse scandals that have plagued the church, asking "What will you do about homosexuality in the seminary? What have you done to minors there?"

The Church still holds considerable influence in the Philippines, where government statistics show 80% of the country identifies as Roman Catholic.

Still, that has not dampened approval for the President's campaign against illegal drugs.

While many of the faithful approve of the crackdown on drugs, Picardal believes they oppose the killings themselves. He says policeman have begun to come to confession with troubled consciences.

Still, he concedes the drug war has its supporters. Some ordinary Filipinos, he thinks, have lost their way. "Our churches can be full, but the moral sense of right and wrong, it doesn't seep deeply into the hearts and minds of people," he says.

He ministers regularly to victims' families. He's no stranger to their pain, since his own mother was murdered more than 20 years ago by members of the Philippines' constabulary. He went on to live a life devoted to activism:

In 1973, after dictator Ferdinand Marcos instituted martial law, Picardal was arrested while handing out fliers urging people to resist the regime. He was then imprisoned and tortured.

Later, he spent 16 years as a priest in the southern city of Davao, which is also the hometown of President Duterte.

While Duterte served seven terms as mayor, Picardal joined a commission that investigated extra-judicial killings in the city, the same types of killings that have now spread nationwide.

The priest sees the President as lacking in compassion.

"By the end of his term, there will be over 70,000 people killed in this drug war," Picardal says, extrapolating the figures based on the current rate of killings.

"Most of them will be poor, most of them will be users, and the problems of poverty and country will still be there."

Asked whether he fears for his own life, Picardal says no, there is nothing they can they do to him that's worse than he has already faced. His experience with martial law, and the "people power" revolution that toppled it are forever written into his faith.

"In our darkest moments, martial law, we are never abandoned by God," he says.

He believes the Philippines is once again plunged into such darkness. But even now, as then, he has not lost hope.

More here:

War on drugs: Priest speaks out against Philippines 'blood lust' - CNN

Moments into the ABCs documentary series Ice Wars comes a scene that sums up the battle between police and the drug dealers of Australia.

Its when a squad of heavily-armoured, helmeted police smash through the front door of an ordinary suburban home, screaming as they charge in to capture the criminals who have set up a methamphetamine factory inside.

Looking for all the world like a Hollywood action film, its the adrenalin-charged end to a long investigation but most confronting is that all the drama is anything but unusual.

That was actually the second time we knocked that house over, saysDetective Chief Superintendent Mick Smith of the NSW Drug Squads Chemical Operation Unit, better known by their nickname The Lab Rats.

In fact, there was another house two doors along we had knocked over about 18 months earlier It was a real meth cul-de-sac.

Its that normalisationof ice that its now just a part of the Australian suburban landscape which convinced police to allow cameras an inside view of their daily fight and show how bad the problem has become.

1.3million people in Australia have tried ice, Smith says. Some of your friends and members of your family would have to have tried ice.

But unless youre actually touched by the situation that you own a house and someones cooked meth in it or whether youve got family members who are addicts you really are not aware of the problems it causes.

Ice Wars is out to change that.

Over four episodes, the cameras follow Smiths Lab Rats and other branches of the police force as they go about the business of getting ice off our streets.

In some cases, thats quite literally, such as when the team joins a police Random Breath Test stop in Nowra on the NSW south coast. Of 15 cars pulled over, sixdrivers test positive for ice and are arrested, for a rate of one in every two-and-a-half drivers under the influence.

Or in the NSW town of Wellington where frustrated locals say they are under siege and it feels like every second house has a dealer.

It is everywhere, said Ice Wars executive producer Alex Hodgkinson.

When you have something that is cheaper than beer and with such an attractive sounding name you are dealing with everyday people, its just filtered everywhere.

There was and Im looking at it from my desk a meth lab in a very expensive townhouse just a few steps away from my office.

Proving how ice can touch anyone, the series also joins the health workers dealing with the physical and emotional toll on users and gives voice to the addicts and their families, including former surf champion TomCarroll who turned to the drug after retiring from the world circuit, and Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie, who is fighting to save her addicted son.

Then there are the functional addicts, who go to work every day some in our armed forces, Ice Wars reveals with nobody knowing.

I think people will be surprised, said Hodgkinson. I think they will be shocked.

But this is very real and thats what we really wanted to show. It is what it is.

If you go into a hospital there are more people on ice, if you travel out in the country its more of an issue. Its just exploded and we just wanted to show that.

For the police, the motivation is even simpler. They just want more help.

If we get more feedback from the community about houses they have concerns about, or people who are involved, then well be busier, Smith says. The busier we get, the happier we are.

Ice Wars premieres on the ABC on Tuesday February 7 at 9.30pm.

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Ice Wars: ABC documentary shows reality of Australia's war on drugs - The New Daily