Philippine bishop lashes out at government’s war on drugs – Vatican … – Vatican Radio

The "Walk for Life" march in Kalookan Diocese, 2 July, 2017. - RV

A Philippine bishop raised his voice on Sunday against the governments war on drugs, asking why the only the poor or small-time drug suspects are targeted while big drug lords and cartels go scot free. But has our government identified even just one of the cartels here in our country? asked Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan which covers the cities of Kaloocan, Malabon and Navotas. If this is a war, who is the enemy? Why is it that only the poor or ordinary people end up being the victims? he asked at Mass after leading a Walk for Life march to denounce the growing number of extrajudicial killings in the diocese.

Around 1,000 people including students, parishioners, lay people and religious leaders walked together for more than a kilometer from San Ildefonso Parish Church to San Jose Parish Church, culminating in Holy Mass.

In his homily, Bishop David lashed out against those who sow violence the same way some supporters of Judas did against Jesus. He described those behind the violence are Judases who are in league with the killers. He said if some people consider the suspected drug users and pushers as termites of society, so are those behind the extrajudicial killings.

Bishop David who has been heading the diocese since January, 2016, questioned why crimes like theft and bag snatching are caught on closed circuit television cameras, while murders, people who abduct and kill the helpless dont appear on surveillance cameras. They kill daily. In Navotas alone, they killed about 30 people in a span of three weeks, the bishop said. Sometimes they kill in groups. They move from one place to another and yet the police fail to arrest them.

Saying that the country cannot suppress crime by committing another crime, the 56-year-old prelate said that summary executions will just worsen the drug problem. At a time of increasing drug-related violence, he lamented that majority of these murder cases remain unsolved and the killers are still on the loose. Bishop David called on the government to solve all incidents of extrajudicial killings, dubbed recently by policemen as death under investigation cases.

President Rodrigo Duterte came to power promising a brutal, bloody war on drugs. His first year in office, which he marked Friday, has been marked by that promise. More than 7,000 alleged drug suspects have died in extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, in encounters with police or gunned down in so-called vigilante killings. Most of those deaths have been classified by police as "deaths under investigation." The killings have drawn widespread international condemnation, with Human Rights Watch describing Duterte's first year in power as a "human rights calamity."

In a pastoral letter in February, read out in the churches of Asias largest Catholic nation, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines agreed that the traffic in illegal drugs needs to be stopped, but "the solution does not lie in the killing of suspected drug users and pushers." The bishops expressed their concern for those killed, their families and the reign of terror in many places of the poor. Many are killed not because of drugs. Those who kill them are not brought to account, the bishops lamented.

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Philippine bishop lashes out at government's war on drugs - Vatican ... - Vatican Radio