By Vir B. Lumicao
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| Iconic picture of a woman gieving over a victim of the anti-drugs war |
Some Filipinos citing the wave of extrajudicial killings in
the Philippines amid the government’s anti-drugs campaign are reportedly trying
to seek asylum abroad and Hong Kong is one of the places in their sights.
According to sources who contacted The SUN recently, a few
of these asylum-seekers have already come to Hong Kong, overstayed their
tourist visas and applied for non-refoulement claims, citing President Rodrigo Duterte’s
bloody anti-drugs campaign.
“Some people have found a new
reason to justify their bid for asylum, and the anti-drugs campaign is quite a
convenient and credible excuse,” one of the sources said.
Previous asylum-seekers have
cited various reasons, from death threats by cuckolded husbands, debtors and
parties in property disputes, to being threatened with harm by their own
relatives for bringing shame to the family.
“The new Filipino
asylum-seekers are invoking Article 2 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, which
guarantees the right to life,” said another source, who added that the
bloodletting at home could set off a wave of refugees.
The anti-drugs war was a platform of Duterte when he ran for
the presidency in the Philippines’ national elections in May this year, which he
won overwhelmingly.
His victory was immediately followed by a daily spate of
summary killings of known and suspected drug suppliers, pushers and addicts,
even before he assumed office on July 1.
Statistics from July 1 cited by the Philippine National
Police in a Senate probe into the killings was 3,441 dead --1,375 in legitimate police operations and 2,066
“deaths under investigation”, a euphemism for summary executions attributed to
vigilantes.
Some of those spooked by the
campaign have reportedly left the country to take up residency in another
country, or seek a safe haven, as did these asylum or torture claimants in Hong
Kong.
The SUN sent an inquiry to
the Hong Kong Immigration Department to verify the reports, but failed to get a
direct reply. A spokesperson for the Department merely directed this writer to a
site which showed that as of June this year, there were a total of 461
Filipinos out of 11,169 torture claimants in Hong Kong.
There are no statistics yet
for the relevant period of July to September, when the Duterte administration
has been in power.
