Indonesian authorities threaten addicts with 'Duterte-style' war on drugs
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| President Rodrigo Duterte and BNN Chief Commander General Budi Waseso, photo compiled from Google |
BNN chief Commander General Budi Waseso expressed that there is nothing wrong with the method, such comment, according to Time Magazine, indicate that the senior officials of Indonesia "favor the sort of extrajudicial approach to suppressing the drug trade underway in the Philippines".
Waseso said “there are too few drug dealers who are dead, while they have killed thousands of people", and thus killing the addicts would be justified.
He then alluded to BNN claims that 15,000 Indonesians die every year because of drugs, a number debunked in 2015, when Indonesian President Joko Widodo cited them in reference to a national drug "emergency" he said was occurring.
In the country, while there is no exact number pertaining to casualties from extrajudicial killings in President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war, it has reached thousands.
Duterte and his allies have variously claimed between 3 million and 7 million are addicted to drugs in the Philippines. In May, Duterte fired the head of the country's Dangerous Drug Board for hewing to a figure of 1.8 million drug users, based on the most recent national survey.
President Widodo launched the National Program on the Eradication of Illegal Drugs and Drug Abuse in Indonesia, a multifaceted approach to tackling the drug trade that also includes educational initiatives.
He also ordered policwemen to shoot foreign drug dealers who resist arrest.
42 drug suspects in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province, have been shot by the policemen in a span of 10 months.
An increase in reports of police shooting drug dealers have been found by Dave McRae, senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute,who said "This upswing coincides with the hardening rhetoric about narcotics."
Source: time.com
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