MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang today said it will run after drug traffickers who continue to use Filipinos as “sacrificial pawns.”
In a statement read in a press conference immediately after the executions of Ramon Credo, Sally Ordinario-Villanueva and Elizabeth Batain, Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said “we are resolved to ensure that the chain of victimization, as pushers entrap and destroy lives in pursuit of their trade, will be broken. Those who traffic in illegal drugs respect no laws, no boundaries, and have no scruples about destroying lives.”
Lacierda stressed: “Our response must be relentless, with government and the citizenry working together to ensure vigilance and mutual support to prevent our countrymen from being used by drug pushers as sacrificial pawns, whether at home or abroad.”
Lacierda said the government was not wanting in appealing for the 3 Filipinos’ clemency.
“Our government had taken every available opportunity to appeal to the authorities of China for clemency in their cases, to which the Chinese government responded with a postponement of the execution. In the end, however, the sentence was imposed,” he said.
He said the nation sympathizes with the families of Filipinos.
He said their deaths are a “vivid lesson in the tragic toll the drug trade takes on entire families.”
