Convicted Philippine felons on Tuesday (Sept 20) told a Congressional hearing they had bribed a former justice minister and fierce critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, dealing another blow to her efforts to investigate the country’s deadly war on drugs.

Senator Leila De Lima has become an increasingly isolated voice since seeking to hold Duterte to account for unleashing a crackdown on narcotics in which 3,800 people have been killed since the president took office 11 weeks ago.

Bank robber Herbert Colangco told Congress he had paid 3 million pesos (S$85,385) a month since October 2013 to De Lima, then justice secretary, to let him hold concerts and sell beer to inmates.

He also said he ran a brothel and had been pressured to sell drugs to raise money for her election campaign, but had refused.

The testimony came a day after senators voted to remove De Lima as head of a house committee probing the drugs war, a campaign condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups but cheered by Filipinos tired of crime and drug addiction. “I have de Lima’s blessings,” Colangco said, when Congress members asked how he had smuggled contraband into the prison.

He said the bribes were paid through a security guard and presented what he said were receipts for the money remitted.

Another convict testified to seeing De Lima in the cell of an inmate who monopolised drugs deals in one of the country’s largest prisons. Two former prison officials told the panel they had delivered 5 million pesos in bribes to De Lima’s home.

Opposition to De Lima has intensified since she arranged for a self-confessed hitman to testify to a senate hearing last week that he saw Duterte shoot a man dead with an Uzi assault weapon and order other killings while a mayor of Davao City in the 1990s. Duterte’s office denies the allegations.

De Lima did not attend Tuesday’s congress hearing and gave a speech at the senate defending the investigation. “No committee chairmanship is worth it, if it sacrifices my principles,” she said.

Speaking at an army base in Davao, Duterte said the events in Congress showed there were plenty of people who could back up his allegations that De Lima was taking cash from drug gangs. “I was correct all along,” he said.

UNICEF said Tuesday that the recent deadly flooding in North Korea had washed entire communities away, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless with disease and malnutrition on the rise.

At least 138 people have died and hundreds more are missing after torrential rains caused devastation in the country’s far north, with rescue teams only now making it to more remote, hard-hit areas.

“It was really shocking to see the scale of damage,” said UNICEF’s Anil Pokhrel who was part of the relief team that visited Musan Country, which is separated from China by the Tumen River.

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North Korea floods leave tens of thousands homeless

Source:

AFP

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Photographs of the area showed barren expanses of mud dotted with the wreckage of homes, as local residents – wrapped up against the coming winter – struggled to salvage what they could to rebuild.

Disease and malnutrition are rising, UNICEF said, with health clinics reporting that twice as many children were seeking help compared to before the disaster.

Respiratory infections, diarrhoea and indigestion are also increasingly common, they added.

Aid workers were distributing peanut paste, which is used to treat severe acute malnutrition, to local children, warning that “numbers are expected to rise dramatically without support”.

“There is desperate need for proper and good access to food, nutrition, clean water, health and proper sanitation facilities,” said Pokhrel.

Houses, roads and train lines were all washed away in the area, leaving more than 24,000 people homeless, cut off from help, and struggling to find food and clean water.

“The damage is on a much bigger scale than initially thought,” said Pokhrel.

The impoverished nation is vulnerable to natural disasters, especially floods, due partly to deforestation and poor infrastructure.