The recently-released drug war matrix only affirms the scale of impunity that runs the administration’s murderous anti-narcotics campaign.

Following the internal proceedings conducted by the Philippine National Police (PNP) itself, a 21-page report by the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed last week that of the 52 drug war killings, only seven cops were dismissed while the rest were only meted out light penalties, like demotion and suspension. The 52 cases represent the total number of cases that the PNP referred to the DOJ for investigation and possible filing of cases against involved police personnel.

This means that out of the 6,191 government-acknowledged drug war casualties, the state was only able to go after 52 cases—a measly 0.8 percent of the “official” deaths.

President Rodrigo Duterte has wanted this anyway. “I will protect you. I will not allow one policeman or one military to go to jail," Duterte said in September 2016 during his visit to a military camp in Isabela. “Lahat ng gawin mo, utos yan ni Mayor Duterte, siya ang ikulong ninyo.” There was no veneer of legality—there was only one rule of engagement from the president himself: shoot-to-kill.

From here, it is not difficult to trace the chain of culpability. It is Duterte who appoints the PNP chief who, as expected, would implement the president’s violent drug war. It is the PNP chief who decides on the fate of the cops involved in a killing, after a summary hearing by the PNP’s own Internal Affairs Service which has only the power to recommend sanctions. Impunity, then, runs from the murderous cop to Camp Crame, and, ultimately, to Malacañang. This chain is exactly why presidential aspirant Bato Dela Rosa is now jittering over his possible prosecution on the war on drugs which began under his term as PNP chief.

With the PNP as the judge, jury, and executioner in these drug war cases, any veneer of accountability on their end would only be done to meet the public’s clamor and, at the very least, make it appear that the police are punished for their misdemeanors. These spectacles are often publicized whenever a police head honcho berates a fellow officer for a crime they committed. Last June, the PNP released a short clip that had gone viral of PNP Chief Guillermo Eleazar fuming over the cop who killed a 52-year-old woman in Quezon City.

But the PNP’s transmittal of these 52 cases for DOJ’s investigation is far from being a step toward accountability nor a sign of the state’s good faith in supposedly respecting human rights. These killer cops have been allowed to remain in service, still empowered to enforce the same set of laws that they have brazenly violated. In cases where an officer is found guilty, the punishment does not commensurate with the crime committed. For one, the police officer, who killed an alleged drug pusher who supposedly fought back in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig last December 2016, was found guilty of “irregularity in the performance of duty” and was only given a reprimand—a mere slap on the wrist considering the gravity of the incident.

Aside from a cloak of immunity from Malacañang, the list also revealed a pattern of neglectful actions done by the police in their failure to preserve the 52 crime scenes. In the same Fort Bonifacio incident, the police had failed to do the necessary crime scene investigation, including the essential ballistic and paraffin tests, and autopsy reports to fully investigate the drug-related killing.

Even worse, nearly one in 10 drug killings do not even contain an explanation from the authorities as to why the suspect was killed, per data collated by The Drug Archive from May 2016 to September 2017. And this is exactly the point: in the absence of solid evidence and reports, extrajudicial killings will not be proven; the truth is effectively suppressed. This, in effect, has made it difficult for the victims’ families to file charges versus the involved cops.

In failing to establish the most basic circumstances of the death, the police have stripped the victims of their humanity and identity. The state has reduced them to nothing more than names on a list—unintended consequences, mere collateral damage in a war to “save the republic.”

It does not escape us that the release of these 52 cases came just as the pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has decided to open an investigation into the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. The list’s publication is nothing but a last-ditch attempt of the state to disprove international rights groups’ observations that our institutions of government are failing to address the largest mass killing in the Philippines in recent memory.

There can be no saving face, then, for the architects and henchmen of the drug war. Inasmuch as Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque tries to spin the DOJ’s matrix as proof that domestic accountability mechanisms are working, there is no doubt that the speck of cases publicized is already a testament to a police force and a president so emboldened to put the entire rule of law at their disposal.

If anything, the limited Tokhang cases in the drug war matrix hint at the extent of the carnage and are an invitation for international bodies to continue probing the drug war. The families of the victims have already overwhelmingly signified support to the ICC’s ongoing probe of the drug war-related extrajudicial killings, and mounting public pressure may have as well prompted the release of the drug war matrix.

It is only through a probe led by impartial international bodies can we truly see its full picture and take steps to give justice to those deaths. The very murderer, after all, simply cannot be expected to dispense justice to the dead and the living. ●