The Manila Times
KALOOKAN Bishop Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David slammed Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano for saying that former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs was a “pro-life campaign.” On Facebook Live on Saturday, Cayetano remarked that the “campaign against drugs is a human rights campaign. It's a pro-life campaign, because drugs kill.” On a Facebook post Sunday, David questioned whether Cayetano can personally make his remarks to the families of victims of the bloody anti-drug campaign. “I wonder if he can say this straight to the faces of the thousands of women widowed and children orphaned when their loved ones — on mere suspicion of drug involvement and without benefit of due process — were murdered in cold blood,” David said. He recalled that many of the victims of the war on drugs were abducted, tortured and left dead in public places. “Countless victims were not simply shot. They were abducted, tortured then dropped dead in the streets, their heads wrapped in plastic bags, sealed with packaging tape around their necks — left to struggle for their last gasp of oxygen until they breathed no more,” David said. He said defending or legitimizing extrajudicial killings could have legal consequences under international law, stressing that they could constitute “instigation” or “aiding and abetting” crimes against humanity under Article 25 of the Rome Statute if they embolden perpetrators and create a sense of impunity. “Mr. Cayetano should know that under international law, public statements that frame extrajudicial killings as ‘pro-life’ — that rehabilitate and legitimize a campaign of murder — do not enjoy the protection of free speech,” he said. “Words have consequences. Words have victims. And in international criminal law, words have accountability,” David said.
Go to News Site