An internationally respected British public health consultant, who has been in Philippines jails for more than two years on what he says are fabricated drugs charges, is taking on the country’s main drug enforcement agency, making allegations of fabricated evidence, theft and corruption.
Sixty-year-old Elden Chamberlain was Thursday due to open his defence case in the regional trial court in the city of Cagayan de Oro in a case that has the potential to highlight previous allegations against the Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in the wake of the country’s notorious “war on drugs”.
In affidavits to be presented to the court, Chamberlain and defence witnesses allege that drugs were planted in Chamberlain’s home, that police have lied and tampered with evidence and that they stole food and money.
However, the case did not proceed on Thursday, and the hearing has been delayed until 19 October.
Allegations of fabricated charges and human rights abuses have been raised before against PDEA, which is under investigation by the Philippines government congressional and senate committees amid allegations that its officers have themselves been trading in drugs.
The agency is also at the centre of an international criminal court investigation over at least 12,000 killings during the so called “war on drugs”, in which former President Rodrigo Duterte encouraged the shooting of drug addicts.
However it is unusual for a foreign national to get caught in such allegations – and even more unusual for them to be contested, with most Filipinos facing charges entering plea bargain deals.
Chamberlain, a British citizen raised in Australia and now a permanent resident of the Philippines, has spent 30 years working in HIV/Aids advocacy in southeast Asia, including as a consultant for United Nations agencies, AusAid and US Aid. He has coordinated the western Pacific constituency of the Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria.
Board members of the western constituency have written him references. One, Ms Fiu Williame-Igara, is also Papua New Guinea country director for the Save the Children fund. She describes Chamberlain as a “a person of the highest integrity and deeply respected colleague”.
However, since 2019 he has been written up in the Manila media as a “drug fiend”, says he has been in fear of his life from PDEA officers and has spent two periods in jail waiting for separate sets of charges to come to trial.
He is presently in the city jail of Cagayan de Oro with his co-accused, his Filippino colleague Ace Lanzaderas, who is the administrator for the Global Fund in the western Pacific region. Lanzaderas has also pleaded not guilty.
Chamberlain, who lives in Cagayan de Oro with his husband under British law, Rene Bajuyo, says he is not sure why he has been charged. He says can prove the charges to be lies, but in nineteen months in jail, he has had less than four hours of court time.
Speaking to the Guardian via his family, he said: “There are days I go crazy thinking about this. I feel like I am stuck in some awful B grade movie … All I can think is that I somehow pissed off someone either in PDEA or in the health sector with connections.
“The only other thing I can think, was that I was literally in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The PDEA has been contacted for comment.
The vice consul for the British embassy in Manila, Emmanuel Rosales said “we are aware of Mr Chamberlain and providing assistance”, but that he could not comment on the details of individual cases.
Chamberlain was first charged in September 2019. He had that day returned to the Philippines from work in Thailand as Chairman of the Australian Thai Foundation for HIV. He visited an HIV positive drug user who owed him money in the upmarket Manila suburb of Makati and walked in to a PDEA operation. The authorities say they found methamphetamines and gamma-butyrolactone at the apartment. Chamberlain was charged with operating a drug den.
Chamberlain will present CCTV evidence that he says shows he was sitting alone in Starbucks at the time he is alleged to have been administering drugs.
He spent nine months in the Makati jail before being released on bail. Expecting the case to be dismissed, he applied for permission to travel overseas for work. On the day that application was to be heard, 9 February last year, his home in Cagayan de Oro was raided by about 20 officers of the PDEA. He and Lanzaderas were charged with possessing and selling about $US10 worth of methamphetamine and marijuana.
Police claim the men were organising a drug deal, and that a 1000 pesos note and the drugs “found” on the premises are evidence of this.
Chamberlain recalls: “On the night of our arrest I was convinced we were going to be killed. Having the tracers of guns playing across your body in the complete darkness was terrifying … I recall saying there was no hope – one of the PDEA officers said to me “there is always hope if you pray”.
Chamberlain will present evidence to court that he was on a Zoom call with colleagues in the United Kingdom at the time he is alleged to have been selling drugs. He will also claim the PDEA officers stole money and goods from his house, that CCTV footage from the gated community where he lives was tampered with, and that the officers did not have proper search warrants for the raid.
Meanwhile, the charges in the Makati case have yet to be resolved, with the next court hearing on 25 October.
