Bishop ‘shivers’ at Albayalde defense of Duterte ‘confession’ on drug killings

PHILIPPINE National Police Director General Oscar Alabayalde incurred the ire of a Catholic bishop for describing as “small” the number of people killed in the drug war of President Rodrigo Duterte, saying that the victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) were neither “pests” nor “rodents.”

“I shiver at the ease with which people in authority can reduce human lives to numbers and percentages. They’re not pests or rodents, sir. They’re human beings,” Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, concurrent vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), posted on his Facebook account on Saturday night.