There are no “extrajudicial killings” in the country.
The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said it would be a misnomer to call deaths in the drug war as “extrajudicial killings,” saying it has a “very emotional meaning.”
So from now on, all government agencies will refer to these deaths as “extra-legal killings.”
In a press conference at the DILG-National Police Commission Center in Quezon City on Friday, DILG Assistant Secretary Epimaco Densing III said the “more generic term” extra-legal killings would cover killings committed by the police in self-defense against drug suspects resisting arrest.
“If we talk about its root-word “judicial,” what is judicial killing? It’s a killing ordered by courts. The only example of extrajudicial killing is death penalty, so if a country has no death penalty then obviously, it has no judicial killing, if a country has no judicial killing, then there’s no extrajudicial killing,” he explained.
Expounding on the definition of the term, he said killings committed by policemen in anti-narcotics operations while they are “defending their lives” are deemed “legal.”
But when police operatives kill a defenseless criminal, that will fall under “extra-legal killings” and can be considered a human rights violation. CDG/rga
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