SC asked to nullify Duterte's 'drug war' memo

Human rights lawyers on Friday petitioned the Supreme Court to nullify a 2016 police memorandum that laid down former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war policy, saying it remained ”in effect” in their view.

They also asked the high court to rule on their petitions seeking judicial protection for families victimized by the drug war.

The memo titled “Project: Double Barrel,” signed on July 1 ten years ago by then Philippine National Police chief Gen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, marked both drug syndicates and smalltime peddlers and users as PNP targets. But the ensuing antinarcotic operations mostly focused on urban poor communities where, according to rights watchdogs, as many as 30,000 were killed.

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Dela Rosa, who is on his second term as senator, is fleeing an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in connection with the drug war it will try in November. Duterte was brought to the ICC’s custody on March 12 last year.

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‘Evading judicial review’

In their manifestation and urgent motion for resolution, lawyers Joel Butuyan and Gilbert Andres of CenterLaw Philippines said the 2016 memorandum and other “executive issuances being challenged are still in effect and are also capable of repetition yet evading review.”

They also warned that these policies “may be altered, superseded or rendered inoperative before a judicial review is completed.”

“If the mere end of term of a presidency can purportedly render constitutional challenges moot, then important constitutional questions concerning executive action could repeatedly evade judicial determination despite their continuing significance,” they said.

Amparo petitions

Butuyan, who writes a column for the Inquirer, and Andres also asked the court to act on two consolidated petitions for writ of amparo which they filed in 2017.

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A writ of amparo is a protective legal remedy which serves to uphold a person’s constitutional rights to life, liberty and security.The petitions cover 26 communities in Metro Manila where, it said, residents were harassed at the height of crackdown. For security reasons, the lawyers declined to give media specific details about the areas.

They further asked the court, “on this 10th year commemoration of the bloody ‘war on drugs,’ [to] judicially declare and place on historical record that the Philippine ‘war on drugs’ happened, that its policy was [the] extrajudicial/extralegal killings of mere suspects and [that it] was unconstitutional for violating the constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of Filipinos.”

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In a separate statement, Butuyan and Andres said the families of drug war victims “are left commemorating a decade of grief, loss and unaddressed systemic violence.”

The PNP is “not doing anything to withdraw” the memorandum, Butuyan said in an interview with reporters.

“If similar incidents happen again, [the police] may still use Double Barrel to justify their operations,” he said. “So we are asking the Supreme Court to decide on this and declare it invalid and unconstitutional.”

Earlier petitions

A resolution by the high court on their petitions would “lend credence to the assertion that the Philippines has a working judicial system” ensuring the protection of its citizens, the lawyers said.

The Supreme Court earlier issued resolutions on two petitions against the drug war, but without deciding yet on their substantive merits.

One was filed by Catholic nun Ma. Juanito Daño in connection with the killing of 35 people and the arrest of eight suspects. Another was filed by lawyer Aileen Almora, whose brother died in an antidrug police operation.

Daño’s petition was represented by CenterLaw and Almora’s, the Free Legal Assistance Group (Flag).

In an April 3, 2018 resolution, the high court said “The government’s inclusion of these deaths among its other accomplishments may lead to the interference that these are state-sponsored killings.”

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It also ordered the Office of the Solicitor General to turn over police records of the antidrug campaign to Flag and CenterLaw. INQ