Marcos touts ‘bloodless’ drug war, no ‘extermination’MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos yesterday trumpeted the gains of his crackdown on illegal drugs, saying billions of pesos worth of narcotics have been seized and thousands of offenders have been arrested without resorting to “extermination,” in an apparent effort to contrast his style with that of his predecessor and critic Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos was referring to the eight Es that make up the endgame in the Duterte administration’s drug war – engineering the structure, education, extraction of information, enforcement, enactment of laws, environment, economics and evaluation. Duterte waged a brutal war against illegal drugs when he was president, a campaign that human rights advocates said had encouraged extrajudicial killing and other abusive practices. ‘Not bloodless’The Marcos administration’s campaign against illegal drugs is not “bloodless” as claimed by Marcos during his SONA, Human Rights Watch said. “And by claiming several successes such as the alleged reduction in the number of villages affected by illegal drugs, we expect the ‘drug war’ violence to continue, probably even worsen,” he added.

Source: Philippine Star July 23, 2024 05:15 UTC