GMA’s Anti-Drugs Adviser has Questionable Human Rights Record

Alfredo Lim, former Manila mayor and a losing presidential aspirant, is being resurrected as presidential adviser on illegal drugs. Although Lim, a former police general, may still project the image of a “tough cop,” being tough alone – critics say - does not make a major campaign a success especially given his past record.

By Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat.com

Last June 23, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo appointed Alfredo Lim as presidential adviser on illegal drugs as part of the massive campaign against the illegal drug trade which she launched recently. Together with retired police Col. Reynaldo Jaylo and retired police Maj. Lucio Margallo, Lim will be part of a team that would take the lead part in tackling the drug menace.

Formerly a police general and director-general of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Lim served two terms as mayor of Manila: 1992-95 and 1995-98. He was appointed interior and local government secretary by former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada after losing in the 1998 presidential elections - in which his candidacy was endorsed by former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino. He held that post until the ouster of Estrada in 2001, and was loudly booed by the people at Edsa II when he went up the stage, probably in an attempt to show that he had switched sides.

Human rights record

The militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) has expressed concern over Lim's appointment to a prominent place in the government's anti-drug campaign, citing his human rights record. "The tough cop image may look good to a public desperate for a solution to the drug problem, but that image was created at the expense of due process and human rights," Bayan secretary-general Teddy Casiño said in a statement last June 25.

Casiño said that a man like Lim cannot be the solution to the drug menace. "The drug problem can't be solved simply by hiring goons to go after suspected drug pushers and users," Casiño said. According to him, it is "painstaking intelligence-gathering and police work" which would ultimately do the job.

The late human rights lawyer Augusto "Bobbit" Sanchez would have agreed with Casiño if he were alive today. In a letter to the editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer published on April 9, 1998, Sanchez, who also served as Corazon Aquino’s labor secretary, assailed Lim's human rights record and described the latter's public and private record as "shadowy."

In his letter, Sanchez pointed to Lim's role in the arrest and jailing of the late activist leader Lean Alejandro and a companion on Feb. 13, 1985.

Militant students were then holding a rally at the gates of Camp Aguinaldo to protest police brutality. Alejandro and a number of fellow activists were holding a meeting in a nearby office and were asked to help when the situation started getting out of hand. He and former Bayan member JV Bautista negotiated in behalf of the protesters, and were arrested by a team led by then Brig. Gen. Lim. They were detained at the Ipil Rehabilitation Center in Fort Bonifacio and were released two months later after a sustained campaign by cause-oriented groups.

Mendiola Massacre

Casiño's statement further avers that Lim was the person in command when the Mendiola Massacre took place.

On Jan. 22, 1987, peasants spearheaded by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas marched to Mendiola to demand genuine agrarian reform. Policemen and soldiers fired on the protesters, killing 13 of them and wounding hundreds more. The massacre led to the breakdown of the peace negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front. As an act of protest, the late nationalist and civil libertarian Jose W. Diokno resigned from his position as head of the government peace panel.

When the Mendiola Massacre took place, Lim was the head of the Western Police District.

Lim was still a police official during that period in the Aquino presidency which saw repetitions of scenes from the Japanese occupation. The police then frequently conducted raids on urban poor communities and, with the assistance of men whose faces were hidden under bayongs, arrested suspected "subversives" without warrants.

Both Sanchez's letter and Casiño's statement also note that Lim was the head of the Western Police District on Nov. 10, 1987, when Dr. Nemesio Prudente, then president of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) and a leader of the Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at para sa Amnestiya, was wounded in an ambush attempt. Prudente's lawyer was killed in the ambush.

There were other assassination attempts on Prudente. All in all, the Prudente assassination attempts killed four people and hurt eight others.

Before the ambush attempts on him, Prudente had been accused by the police of being a "subversive" and giving shelter to elements of the New People's Army within the PUP premises.

Summary execution

Lim had been involved in anti-drug campaigns even as NBI director. Sanchez's letter notes that Lim was the leader of the NBI team that summarily executed suspected drug traders Rolando de Guzman and Jose "Don Pepe" Oyson.

As mayor of Manila, Lim came up with an unusual way of fighting illegal drugs: on the houses of suspected drug pushers he spray-painted signs that identified owners of those houses as drug pushers. But media reports said that many of those whose houses were spray-painted had nothing to do with illegal drugs. Human rights groups assailed Lim for smearing reputations without the benefit of due process. The Supreme Court eventually declared the spray-painting campaign illegal.

As head of the team tasked with taking the lead in President's Macapagal-Arroyo's anti-drug campaign, Lim has declared intentions of resurrecting his spray-painting drive.

Sanchez wrote in his letter of a former NBI agent who served under Lim. According to him, the former NBI agent had written to him on March 8 of that same year that "One whole page of a major daily newspaper could not accommodate all his (Lim's) transgressions," and in the same breath described Lim as "more dangerous than former President Marcos." Bulatlat.com

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