Despite significant advances made by governments around the world in humanizing drug control systems since the turn of the century, human rights abuses still seem to be taking place in the course of enforcing drug prohibitions in recent years and, in some cases, have only gotten worse.
By Phillip Smith
The United States continues to imprison hundreds of thousands of people for drug offenses and imposes state surveillance (probation and parole) on millions more. The Mexican military rides roughshod over the rule of law, disappearing, torturing, and killing people with impunity as it wages war on (or sometimes works with) the infamous drug cartels. Russia and Southeast Asian countries, meanwhile, hold drug users in treatment centers that are little more than prison camps.
A July virtual event, which ran parallel to the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, shined a harsh light on brutal human rights abuses by the Philippines and Indonesia in the name of the war on drugs and also highlighted one method of combating impunity for drug war crimes: by imposing sanctions.
The event, SDG 16: The Global War on Drugs vs. Rule of Law and Human Rights, was organized by DRCNet Foundation (a sister organization of the Drug Reform Coordination Network/StoptheDrugWar.org), a U.S.-based nonprofit in consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. The SDG 16 refers to Sustainable Development Goal 16Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutionsof the UNs 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Event organizer and DRCNet Foundation executive director David Borden opened the meeting with a discussion about the broad drug policy issues and challenges being witnessed on the global stage.
Drug policy affects and is affected by many of these broad sustainable development goals, he said. One of the very important issues is the shortfall in global AIDS funding, especially in the area of harm reduction programs. Another goalPeace, Justice, and Strong Institutionsis implicated in the Philippines, where President [Rodrigo] Duterte was elected in 2016 and initiated a mass killing campaign admitted by himalthough sometimes denied by his defendersin which the police acknowledged killing over 6,000 people in [anti-drug] operations [since 2016], almost all of whom resisted arrests, according to police reports. NGOs put the true number [of those who were] killed at over 30,000, with many executed by shadowy vigilantes.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has proposed a formal investigation of human rights abuses in the Philippines drug war, but the court seems hampered by a chronic shortfall in funding, Borden pointed out.
Former prosecutors have warned pointedly on multiple occasions of a mismatch between the courts mission and its budget, he said. Recent activity at the conclusion of three different preliminary investigations shows that while the prosecutor in the Philippines moved forward, in both Nigeria and Ukraine, the office concluded there should be formal investigations, but did not [submit] investigation requests, leaving it [up to the] new prosecutors [to do so]. The hope is [that the ICC] will move as expeditiously as possible on the Philippines investigation, but resources will affect that, as will the [Philippine] governments current stance.
The governments current stance is perhaps best illustrated by President Dutertes remarks at his final State of the Nation address on July 26. In his speech, Duterte dared the ICC to record his threats against those who destroy the country with illegal drugs, the Rappler reported. I never deniedand the ICC can record itthose who destroy my country, I will kill you, said Duterte. And those who destroy the young people of my country, I will kill you, because I love my country. He added that pursuing anti-drug strategies through the criminal justice system would take you months and years, and again told police to kill drug users and dealers.
At the virtual event, Philippines human rights attorney Justine Balane, secretary-general of Akbayan Youth, the youth wing of the progressive, democratic socialist Akbayan Citizens Action Party, provided a blunt and chilling update on the Duterte governments bloody five-year-long drug war.
The killings remain widespread, systematic, and ongoing, he said. Weve documented 186 deaths, equal to two a day for the first quarter of the year. Of those, 137 were connected to the Philippine National Police, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, or the armed forces, and 49 were committed by unidentified assailants.
The unidentified assailantsvigilante death squads of shadowy provenanceare responsible for the majority of killings since 2016.
Of the 137 killed, 96 were small-time pushers, highlighting the fact that the drug war is also class warfare targeting small-time pushers or people just caught in the wrong place or wrong time, Balane said.
He also provided an update on the Duterte administrations response to ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensoudas June 14 decision concluding her preliminary examination of human rights abuses in the Philippine drug war with a request to the ICC to open a formal investigation into the situation in the Philippines.
In a bid to fend off the ICC, in 2020, the Philippine Justice Department announced it had created a panel to study the killings carried out by agents of the statepolice or militarybut Balane was critical of these efforts.
[In the second half of 2020], the Justice Department said it had finished the initial investigations, but no complaints or charges were filed, he said. They said it was difficult to find witnesses [who were willing to testify about the killings], but [the victims] families said they were not approached [by the review panel].
The Justice Department is also undercutting the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, an independent constitutional office whose primary mission is to investigate human rights abuses, Balane pointed out.
The Justice Department said the commission would be involved [in the investigation process by the panel], but the commission says [that the] Justice [Department] has yet to clarify its rules and their requests have been left unanswered, Balane said. The commission is the constitutional body tasked to investigate abuses by the armed forces, and they are being excluded by the Justice Department review panel.
The Justice Department review is also barely scraping the surface of the carnage, Balane said, noting that while in May the Philippine National Police (PNP) announced they would be granting the review panel accessto 61 investigationswhich accounts for less than 1 percent of the killings that the government acknowledged were part of the official operations since 2016the PNP has now decreased that number to 53.
The domestic review by [the] Justice [Department] appears influenced by Duterte himself, said Balane. This erodes the credibility of the drug war review by the Justice Department, which is the governments defense for their calls against international human rights mechanisms.
The bottom line, according to Balane, is that the killings continue, they are still systematic, and they are still widespread.
In Indonesiawhere, like Duterte in the Philippines, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) also declared a war on drugs in 2016it is not only extrajudicial killings that are the issue but also the increasing willingness of the government to resort to the death penalty for drug offenses.
Extrajudicial killings [as a result of] the drug war are happening in Indonesia, said Iftitah Sari, a researcher with the Indonesian Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, who cited 99 extrajudicial killings that took place in 2017 and 68 that happened in 2018, with a big jump to 287 from June 2019 through June 2020. She also mentioned another 390 violent drug law enforcement incidents that took place from July 2020 through May 2021, of which an estimated 40 percent are killings.
The problem of extrajudicial killings [in Indonesia] is broader than [just] the war on drugs; we [also] have the problem of police brutality, Sari said. Police have a very broad authority and a lack of accountability. There is no effective oversight mechanism, and there are no developments on this issue because we have no mechanisms to hold [the] police accountable.
Indonesia is also using its courts to kill people. Since 2015, Sari reported, 18 people15 of them foreignershave been executed for drug offenses.
In addition to extrajudicial killings, there is a tendency to use harsher punishment, capital punishment, with the number of death penalties rising since 2016, she said.
Statistics Sari presented bore that out. Death penalty cases jumped from 22 in 2016 to 99 in 2019 and 149 in 2020, according to the figures she provided during the virtual event.
Not only are the courts increasingly handing down death sentences for drug offenses, but defendants are also often faced with human rights abuses within the legal system, Sari said.
Violations of the right to a fair trial are very common in drug-related death penalty cases, she said. There are violations of the right to be free from torture, not [to] be arbitrarily arrested and detained, and of the right to counsel. There are also rights violations during trials, including the lack of the right to cross-examination, the right to non-self-incrimination, trial without undue delay, and denial of an interpreter.
With authoritarian governments such as those in Indonesia and the Philippines providing cover for such human rights abuses in the name of the war on drugs, impunity is a key problem. During the virtual events panel discussion, Scott Johnston, of the U.S.-based nonprofit Human Rights First, discussed one possible way of making human rights abusers pay a price: imposing sanctions, especially under the Global Magnitsky Act.
That U.S. law, originally enacted in 2012 to target Russian officials deemed responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison, was expanded in 2016 to punish human rights violators around the globe by freezing their assets and denying them visas to enter the United States.
In an era [when] rising human rights abuses and also rising impunity for committing those abuses [are] a hallmark of whats happening around the world, we see countries adopting these types of targeted human rights mechanisms [imposing sanctions] at a rate that would have been shocking even five or six years ago, said Johnston. Targeted sanctions [like the Global Magnitsky Act] are those aimed against specific individual actors and entities, as opposed to countrywide embargos, he explained.
The Global Magnitsky program is one such mechanism specifically targeted at human rights abuses and corruption, and the United States has imposed it against some 319 perpetrators of human rights abuses or corruption, Johnston said. (The most recent sanctions imposed under the act include Cuban officials involved in repressing recent protests in Cuba, corrupt Bulgarian officials, and corrupt Guatemalan officials.)
Weve seen a continued emphasis on using these tools in the transition to the Biden administration, with 73 cases [of sanctions having been reported] since Biden took office, he noted.
And it is increasingly not just the United States.
The U.S. was the first country to use this mechanism, but it is spreading, Johnston said. Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, [and] the European Union all have these mechanisms, and Australia, Japan, and New Zealand are all considering them. This is a significant pivot toward increasing multilateral use of these mechanisms.
While getting governments to impose targeted sanctions is not a sure thing, the voices of global civil society can make a difference, Johnston said.
These are wholly discretionary and [it] can be difficult to [ensure that they are] imposed in practice, he said. To give the U.S. government credit, we have seen them really listen to NGOs, and about 35 percent of all sanctions have a basis in complaints [nonprofits] facilitated from civil society groups around the world.
And while such sanctions can be politicized, the United States has imposed them on allied countries, such as members of the Saudi government involved in the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi and in cases of honor killings in Pakistan, Johnston noted.
But we still have never seen them used in the context of the Philippines and Indonesia.
Maybe it is time.
This article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Phillip Smith is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a drug policy journalist for more than two decades. He is the longtime writer and editor of the Drug War Chronicle, the online publication of the nonprofit Stop the Drug War, and was the editor of AlterNets coverage of drug policy from 2015 to 2018. He was awarded the Drug Policy Alliances Edwin M. Brecher Award for Excellence in Media in 2013.
Read more:
How the Global Drug War's Victims Are Fighting Back - PRESSENZA International News Agency
- The dark legacy of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines - WBUR News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Step up war on drugs and illicit liquors - Nation - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Forum From the Archives: Brutality of Philippines War on Drugs Laid Bare in Some People Need Killing - KQED - February 22nd, 2024 [February 22nd, 2024]
- Commentary: We need to rethink how we address drug use - Maryland Matters - February 22nd, 2024 [February 22nd, 2024]
- Liberia: Boakai's War on Drugs Gains Momentum - Liberian Daily Observer - February 22nd, 2024 [February 22nd, 2024]
- Tactics are shifting in the war on drugs - Financial Times - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- End overreliance on punitive measures to address drugs problem ... - OHCHR - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- HSCSO making a dent in the local war on drugs - Malvern Daily Record - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- The Drug War on the Border Doesn't Work - Progressive.org - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- 'When I walk to school, I can see people shooting up.' How Seattle's ... - KUOW News and Information - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- The best gifts ever? Being named after drugs and declaring war on ... - POLITICO Europe - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Latin America This Week: September 20, 2023 - Council on Foreign Relations - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- The drug trade is taking over Latin America - PRESSENZA International News Agency - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Safe Supply Streaming Co. Ltd. Completes Reverse Take-Over ... - The Dales Report - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Critics claim drug use clemency proposal to reduce overcrowding in ... - asianews.network - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- War on illicit drugs | Police warn of meth production, collusion with ... - Fiji Times - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- From Grief to Action - The Stranger - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Police in region to discuss war against drugs - Khmer Times - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Five die in suspected drug turf war in Richards Bay - Durban - IOL - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Mayor Bruce Harrell Shares His New Pitch for the War on Drugs - The Stranger - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- Illinois Governor Signs Supervised Release Bill To Help Drug War ... - Marijuana Moment - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- Activist: Automatically expunging cannabis convictions is step ... - MPR News - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- What the crack epidemic reveals about America - The Boston Globe - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- 'The war on drugs has failed: Sir Richard Branson tells LBC there ... - LBC - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- An Enemy in Mexico - The New York Times - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- Betrayal on the Bayou, a New Season of Hit Podcast Smoke Screen ... - Sony Music - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- Worldwide Wednesday's International Roundup: Bangladesh, China ... - Death Penalty Information Center - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- 46 Bacolod local government workers test positive for drug use - Rappler - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- Jon Bernthal's 12 Best Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes - MovieWeb - August 2nd, 2023 [August 2nd, 2023]
- We Are Continuing the War on Drugs - The Stranger - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Clemency Is One Answer to the War On Drugs | American Civil ... - ACLU - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- As Evidence Mounts That 'War On Drugs' Has Failed, Harm ... - Health Policy Watch - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Families of victims await justice as the ICC reopens Philippines drug ... - NPR - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Why Trump and other Republicans want to go to war in Mexico - Vox.com - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- New Queensland drug laws will keep thousands of people out of justice system, advocates say - ABC News - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Ben Cohen's Cannabis Company Tries to Undo the Harm of the War ... - Seven Days - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Pt. 2: The war on cannabis - Cabrini College Loquitur - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Globe editorial: The tide is turning, but the war on drug overdoses is ... - The Globe and Mail - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Eric Clapton Bringing Crossroads Guitar Festival to L.A., With 41 Guests Ranging From Buddy Guy to the War on Drugs - Variety - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Evaluation of all PNP senior officers has significant impact on war on ... - Manila Bulletin - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- War on Drugs Poster Campaign launched at Pangei bazaar - Pothashang - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Mary Jane, MJ, Weed, Oh my! - The Post - The Post - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Opinion: In defence of drug dealers' humanity - The Globe and Mail - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- DECRIMINALIZE MARIJUANA: Incarceration for marijuana needs to ... - The Daily Orange - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Today in History: April 23, Hank Aaron's first home run - Sent-trib - Sentinel-Tribune - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- GUEST COLUMN: Legislation would have helped war on opioids - Colorado Springs Gazette - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Positioned to succeed: Organization offers educational program for ... - Youngstown Vindicator - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Miniature organs driving precision medicine and new drug discovery - University of Arizona - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- 18 concerts to see this week, including Father John Misty, Nickel ... - The Key @ XPN - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- 'They are not helping PRRD' | Philstar.com - Philstar.com - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Brandon Ali: By 18 he had a shotgun. At 19 he was smuggling drugs. Age 20 he had murdered a man - Teesside Live - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Kindiki team shores up gains in drugs, illicit brews fight - The Star Kenya - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- The US Has Spent $1 Trillion Fighting The War On Drugs A Failure, Say The Authors Of New Cannabis Book - Forbes - April 17th, 2023 [April 17th, 2023]
- Gov. Kathy Hochuls cannabis crime bill will destroy lives and restart the War on Drugs (guest column) - newyorkupstate.com - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Official says war on drugs is 'here, local' following discovery of 10K fentanyl-laced ecstasy pills in Silsbee - 12newsnow.com KBMT-KJAC - March 26th, 2023 [March 26th, 2023]
- The War on Drugs: History, Policy, and Therapeutics - Dominican University - March 11th, 2023 [March 11th, 2023]
- The War on Drugs - Crime Museum - March 11th, 2023 [March 11th, 2023]
- What Is the War on Drugs? - WorldAtlas - March 11th, 2023 [March 11th, 2023]
- 9 Important Pros and Cons of the War on Drugs ConnectUS - March 11th, 2023 [March 11th, 2023]
- The War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration - A Brief History of Civil ... - March 11th, 2023 [March 11th, 2023]
- The Former Mexican Official Who Oversaw His Nation's War on Drugs Went on Trial in the ... - Latest Tweet - LatestLY - January 25th, 2023 [January 25th, 2023]
- Women and the Drug War | Drug Policy Alliance - January 6th, 2023 [January 6th, 2023]
- The War on Drugs as Structural Racism - Penn LDI - January 6th, 2023 [January 6th, 2023]
- The Phony War on Drugs - The New York Times - January 6th, 2023 [January 6th, 2023]
- Biden pot pardon to help with War on Drugs' harms to Black people : NPR - December 21st, 2022 [December 21st, 2022]
- War on Ivermectin: The Medicine that Saved Millions and Could Have ... - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- IN NUMBERS: The Philippines' 'war on drugs' - RAPPLER - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs - October 30th, 2022 [October 30th, 2022]
- The Irrational War on Drugs - consortiumnews.com - October 30th, 2022 [October 30th, 2022]
- Race and the Drug War | Drug Policy Alliance - October 30th, 2022 [October 30th, 2022]
- Sound Summit 2022: a guide to the Bay Areas highest music festival - SF Chronicle Datebook - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Here's how health and wellness will show up on Denver's November ballot - Denverite - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- 10 Monday AM Reads - The Big Picture - Barry Ritholtz - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Colombian president Gustavo Petro calls for an end to the War on Drugs ... - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- The U.S. has spent over a trillion dollars fighting war on drugs - CNBC - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- From wounded Latin America, a demand comes to put an end to the ... - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- The War On Drugs, 'Oceans Of Darkness' - WNCW - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- How the War on Drugs failed Democracy and society - IPS Journal - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- This Day in History, October 14th, 2022 War on Drugs - Signals AZ - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Best Phoenix Concerts This Week: The Black Keys, Karol G, The War on Drugs - Phoenix New Times - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]