The World of War The World of War The World of War The World of War The World of War The World of War The World of War Thousands have been killed since 2016 when the so-called War on Drugs was launched. We've also managed to document the killings of at least 248 human rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists and lawyers in relation to their work. We reviewed a lot of government documentation, official figures, data and statistics, photos, videos, including CCTV footage of killings that have been carried out, both in the context of the drug war, but also killings of human rights defenders. And what we found is that there appears to be a real unwillingness to investigate. When the campaign against illegal drugs was launched, it was launched through a command circular that laid out how police operations should be conducted. Now, this circular contained a lot of language that almost encouraged violations of due process. Terms such as negation and neutralization of drug suspects were used. This ominous sounding language was never really defined in this command circular, but this language coupled with verbal encouragement at the highest level of government for police to kill drug suspects may have been interpreted as permission to kill. We've examined 25 police reports which strongly suggest that guns were planted on drug suspects who had been killed. We also looked at 22 other reports which show the use of cut and paste language in post-operative investigations into such killings, which seemed to show that these reports were not filled out with integrity. In the 25 reports that we examined, the serial numbers of guns that were found on the drug suspects were exactly the same, which suggests that these guns may have been planted on the drug suspects who had been killed in the aftermath of the killing to make it look like the killing took place in self-defense. Now, this is obviously very worrying. We've also had access to the kinds of death threats and harassment that human rights defenders have been facing. These include posters that are plastered across, for example, Negros Island, where human rights defenders are called terrorists. They are red tagged and they are equated with the terrorist wing, the armed wing of the Communist Party. In many of these posters, human rights defenders who were depicted were subsequently killed. Given the scale of the killings and other human rights violations that this report has documented and given the failure so far of domestic remedies from bringing to justice the perpetrators, the High Commissioner is calling for an independent investigation into the situation, into the human rights violations in the Philippines. This could be a national or an international investigation, but as long as it is a credible investigation, the High Commissioner stands ready to support it.