HUMAN Rights Watch on Friday urged Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa to take measures in order to prevent another violent dispersal similar to the Wednesday incident at the United States Embassy in Manila.
“He can take meaningful measures to help prevent unlawful injuries or deaths by police by initiating thorough and impartial investigations of all such incidents and ensuring that officers implicated in such abuses face prosecution,” said Human Rights Watch representative Carlos Conde.
“Failure to do so will only guarantee that the culture of impunity for unlawful police violence continues,” said Conde.
Conde said the PNP has suspended nine officers involved in the violent dispersal of protesters—some of whom were bearing batons and throwing stones—demonstrating in support of President Rodrigo Duterte’s “independent foreign policy” in front of the United States Embassy.
They include the driver of a police vehicle who, based on video and still images, drove through the center of the crowd, injuring at least 10 protesters, including women and elderly people.
Dela Rosa pledged to “swiftly and decisively” investigate the conduct of those officers. During the ensuing melee, pushing, shoving, and rock throwing by angry protesters injured at least 30 police officers.
“The images from outside the US Embassy on Wednesday were painful reminders of past police brutality, including the Mendiola Massacre in 1987, and the deadly dispersal of protesters in Kidapawan City in April 2016,” Conde said.
A Human Rights Watch investigation in Kidapawan found that police used unnecessary lethal force when they fired into a crowd of protesters, killing two and injuring dozens of others.
The national police have long been responsible for serious human rights violations with officers frequently implicated in the excessive use of force and torture of criminal suspects.
The police are spearheading Duterte’s homicidal “war on drugs,” killing an estimated 1,645 suspected drug users and dealers between July 1 and October 15.
That dwarfs the 68 killings of suspects police recorded during “anti-drug operations” between January 1 and June 15, Conde said.
Police have attributed the killings to suspects who “resisted arrest and shot at police officers” but Dela Rosa has defied calls for an impartial investigation into those deaths.
“Images of the police violence on Wednesday saddened and angered me. I saw people that got hurt. I really don’t want any Filipino getting hurt,” Dela Rosa said.