INTERNATIONAL organizations like the United Nations (UN) and Human Rights Watch(HRW) did not mince words in their concerns about how Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte is governing the country, specifically on his war against drugs.
The United Nations may send observers to the Philippines after it has expressed concern regarding what the international organization deems as Pres. Duterte’s empowerment of the police to eradicate the drug problem. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has condemned this, and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime referred to as an “apparent endorsement of extrajudicial killings.”
ABS-CBN News reported that the number of drug-related fatalities since May has reached 1,179. With this alarming number and trend, the Human Rights Watch organization believes that what is happening now in the Philippines is now a national emergency and that governments like the United States the members of the European Union should make it clear to Duterte that this will have diplomatic and economic consequences to the Philippines.
In a report by Balitang America New York Correspondent Don Tagala on The Filipino Channel, HRW Deputy Asia Director Phelium Kine said, “In terms of foreign aid or foreign support for various Philippine Agencies and programs — this is something — an obligation of the international community to support the Filipino people, and to support their universal rights and freedoms which the Philippine government right now is absolutely trampling and streamrolling.”
On “Balitang America,” Kine said, “What we have seen in the last seven weeks since President Duterte came to ffice is an almost unprecedented scale of government-sanctioned bloodletting on the streets of the Philippines.”
“President Rodrigo Duterte was not elected with a mandate to trample on the Constitution, to absolutely ignore and abuse human rights and legal process,” Kine pointed out.
With Duterte’s much publicized dismissal of international critics, Kine contended:
“President Duterte is a former lawyer he should know these things. And so for him to either profess ignorance about the idea of due legal process, or to announce that he will not honor it — this is a very disturbing development in terms of where the Philippines is going.”
DO YOU AGREE with the perspective of the UN and the Human Rights Watch?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
