Duterte says police, military can't divulge all information regarding anti-drug, NPA ops due to national security concern
President Rodrigo Duterte said the government, particularly police and military, cannot disclose all records pertaining to their anti-drug and communist New People's Army's operations despite call by the human rights groups due to national security concern.
In the pre-recorded "Talk to the People" aired on Monday night, Duterte said human rights advocates can go to the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines and look into the records of the deaths.
However, Duterte said, "we cannot give all not because we are hiding some facts that known to us, unknown to you...it's a national security issue, like the NPA.
"We have records that those who have died but who have derogatory records in our files and they have references of the people and what they do, we cannot divulge it to anybody but only to the miltiary and to the police," he explained.
Duterte said even he did not know everything.
"I do not ask it and I do not bother to really go out of my way knowing because I'm included among those people who do not know. What I get is the result of the operations. But as to the basis and to the people involved and suspects and their references and sources of information, this cannot be revealed," he said.
Duterte said he is just after the result.
He said the human rights groups can inquire how the battle was fought or how the gunfight started.
But to what prompted the police and the miltiary to go into this kind of operation based on their reports and collated dossier, that could not be looked into, he said.
Some groups, particularly the human rights advocates, have been criticizing Duterte's bloody war on illegal drugs and the killings of some members of the left-leaning organizations. Celerina Monte/DMS