MANILA – There is no difference in the anti-drug campaign of the government then and now, the human rights group Karapatan said after the newly-appointed chief of the Philippine National Police declared that the new performance metric for the police would be the number of drug-related arrests.  

“From paramihan ng patay to paramihan ng aresto? There’s nothing to celebrate about the latter policy that does not solve the root causes of the illegal drugs problem, and even aggravates it by opening the gates to further rights violations against the people, especially the poor,” said human rights lawyer and Karapatan Deputy Secretary general Maria Sol Taule in a statement. 

The new PNP Chief Nicolas Torre III was recently appointed by Ferdinand Marcos Jr who also emphasized intensifying the government’s anti-illegal campaign. According to news reports, his order to the police is to arrest drug suspects and not kill them. 

However, data from the Dahas Project of the University of the Philippines-based Third World Studies Center show that there are 989 drug-related killings in the country as of May 2025. Taule said that this proves that Marcos Jr’s anti-drug war campaign is not as bloodless as claimed. 

Taule said instead of addressing the root causes of the illegal drug trade in the country, the Marcos administration has only continued the Duterte administration’s policies and “practice of fomenting fear among the general populace and ensuring impunity for state-sanctioned vigilante groups and police operatives who kill drug suspects.” 

Taule added that Marcos’s directive of continuing the anti-drug campaign through drug seizures, case filing vs drug dealers and drug lords and going after small-time drug dealers amounts to the same drug war policy of Duterte.

“While the newly installed PNP chief paid lip service to recognizing the rights of arrested people, their planned drug war campaign is a declaration of another open season to arbitrarily arrest persons on mere suspicion of involvement in the illegal drug trade. Wasn’t this the same thing that happened in Duterte’s drug war?,” asked Taule. 

“Under Duterte, it didn’t matter to the police who they were killing. What was important to them was to fulfill their kill quotas. So really, what’s the difference?” she added.

Karapatan and other cause-oriented groups criticized Marcos Jr. for continuing policies implemented by Duterte such as the anti-illegal drug campaign and anti-insurgency policy. For them, continuing these policies did not improve the human rights situation in the country and violations continue to increase. Their call to also abolish the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict is still not heeded by the Marcos administration. 

Taule said they continue to demand that the illegal drug trade problem in the country be addressed as a socio-economic and health issue.

“It is not enough to celebrate the fact that the former president is in detention for having ordered a bloodbath and ignoring the real roots of the drug problem. With the Marcos Jr. administration’s anti-drug policy just a rehash of the previous one, we should be mindful of the horrors of Duterte’s drug war, and demand that the attendant rights violations are not repeated under the current regime,” Taule said. (RVO)