Bishop: Victims of drug war die ‘without valid grounds’

CEBU CITY — The head of the country’s biggest Catholic archdiocese expressed full support for a planned Senate probe into the mostly drug-related daily killings in the city and province that have already claimed 198 lives since February.

Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, who tends to a flock of at least 4 million Catholics and 600 priests, said he hoped the truth would come out about the killings that Mayor Tomas Osmeña had blamed on top police officials.

“We know that there’s a series of killings,” Palma said.

He said if the bloodshed was related to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, then people would have lost lives senselessly.

“It’s sad enough when a member of a family dies and it’s even more sad when they die without valid grounds,” the 68-year-old prelate added.

Killings not solution

“No number of killings will ever end the drug menace because there is more to the death of a person than just illegal drugs,” Palma said.

From February to October, at least 198 persons had already been killed in the city and province in mostly drug-related cases.

Of these, 47 were killed in police operations while the rest were killed in gangland-style street executions.

Most of the killings remained unsolved.

The Senate committee on public order is working on the final schedule of the inquiry, which was requested by the minority bloc allied with the Liberal Party and Sen. Grace Poe.

Unanswered prayer

Palma in August called for a special prayer to bring an end to the killings, but these continued.

He, however, appealed to Cebuanos to not lose heart and keep on praying as bodies piled up on the city and province’s streets daily.

Palma advised people not to jump to conclusions while the investigation unfolded.

But if the killings were part of the President’s war on drugs, these were “not the answer to our problem.”

Osmeña, however, pinned the blame on Chief Supt. Debold  Sinas and Senior Supt. Royina Garma, the city police chief.

“I will tell you, it’s the police,” the mayor recently said.

“No, I take it back. It’s not the police. It’s Garma and Sinas,” he said.

When Garma and Sinas took their posts as the city and region’s top police officers “we have all these killings,” Osmeña said.

Safe Cebu

“When they came into the picture, what happened?” the mayor said.

Sinas said Cebu remained safe despite the killings.

Garma said the killings could be attributed to police’s intensified drive against crimes.

“I don’t know if he considers being aggressive against illegal drugs and other forms of criminality a sin,” Garma said, addressing herself to Osmeña.

Some Cebu policemen had been linked to at least three of the killings in the last three months.

Sinas, head of the Central Visayas police, on Wednesday said some policemen moonlight as assassins not for the police but for drug groups. —With reports from Morexette B. Erram and Delta Dyrecka Letigio

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