THE PHILIPPINES will trumpet its “aggressive and bold” strategies in addressing the illegal narcotics trade to its regional neighbors during an inter-parliamentary meeting on the drug menace this week, a House leader said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Inter-Parliamentary Assembly Fact-Finding Committee (AIFOCOM) to Combat the Drug Menace is holding its 13th meeting starting today, July 4, at Conrad Manila. “[W]e’re just lucky because being the host country this year with a President being serious in addressing the problem of drugs… We’ll now have the perfect venue to share information to cooperate with other ASEAN member countries as far as the problems and the solution to the drug problem within the country and the ASEAN member countries as well,” Surigao del Norte Representative Robert Ace S. Barbers said in a press conference yesterday. Mr. Barbers also said that they will not raise the issue of extrajudicial killings amid the administration’s drug war, noting than the alleged human rights violations were “product of imagination.” “This is a war. And as you all know, if there is a war, there are collateral damages. And maybe, just maybe, some of them will probably think that it was intended or was done on purpose, which is not,” he said. — Raynan F. Javil

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR