By Audrey Mollido

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Leni Robredo claimed Tuesday that authorities have been engaging in a “palit-ulo” scheme, where a drug suspect’s relative is sometimes taken in their stead.

Robredo said that sometimes police take the wife, the husband or any relative of a person on their drug list if they could not locate the person himself.

“They told us of the ‘palit-ulo’ scheme which means ‘exchange heads’ where the wife, or husband or relative in a so-called drug list will be taken if the person himself could not be found,” the vice president said in a recorded message

The recording was for the “Human Rights Challenge: Responding to Extrajudicial Killings in the Drug War,” which is a side session organized by the DRCNet Foundation for the 60^th annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

The Palace dismissed the claim, saying the vice president had been misinformed.

Robredo has been a staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war against illegal drugs. Since Duterte assumed the presidency last year, more than 7,000 people have been killed.

Early this year the government was embroiled in a scandal that involved the killing and murder of a Korean businessman right inside the main headquarters of the Philippine National Police (PNP) by operatives from its anti-drugs unit.

The government, profusely apologizing to the South Korean government over the incident, declared a temporary stop to its anti-illegal drugs campaign.

Recently, the PNP relaunched its anti-drugs campaign which PNP chief Ronald Dela Rosa promised to be less bloody.

Robredo said that communities had also told her office that residents were told that they didn’t have the right to demand a search warrant because their houses were built on properties they didn’t own.

She added that people in these poor areas had been rounded in basketball courts, women were separated from their husbands and those with tattoos were ordered to stand in a corner while their belongings were searched.

She said that his situation had created at atmosphere in which people felt hopeless and helpless as they could not trust the police anymore.

“Our people feel both hopeless and helpless a state of mind that we must all take seriously,” she said. “Some of those told us that when there’s crime they normally go to the police now they don’t know where to turn to.”

Robredo also criticized the government’s approach in addressing the problem on drugs, saying that drug abuse could not be treated by bullets alone.

“Drug abuse should not be treated as one that can be treated as bullets alone. It must be regarded as a complex public health issue linked intimately with poverty and social inequality,” she said.

She said that the government must design effective intervention programs that would help victims of drugs become productive members of our society again.

The vice president said: “You cannot kill addicts and declare the problems solved. The solution is to design the proper health, education and psychosocial interventions to prevent further drug use and to help them transition into productive members of the society.”

Robredo also expressed her elation over attention the international community and human rights groups had given to the war on drugs in the Philippines. —  with a report by Alexis Romero