MANILA – A “political litter” was how Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo described the guilty verdict handed on President Rodrigo Duterte by the International People’s Tribunal for human rights violations.
The decision of the Brussels-based tribunal should not be taken seriously because the evidences presented there did not reflect the current situation in the country, Panelo said.
He said the human rights violations the President was accused of were “concocted” and the verdict “resulted from a one-sided and shallow study of the country’s current situation.”
“It is, therefore, to be treated as nothing but a piece of political litter,” said the presidential lawyer.
Panelo added: “The IPT was used as a tool by the skeptics of the President in a futile attempt to destroy his image and repute, both in the international and local communities. The court has never been pleased or satisfied with any administration.”
According to Panelo, the IPT has also found other leaders guilty of human rights violations: then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2005, and then President Benigno Aquino III and United States President Barack Obama in 2015.
“Given these, it is difficult to dismiss the strong probability that this manipulative practice by personalities from the left is being undertaken as another leverage to succumb to their blue-sky demands,” he said.
“Detractors of the President should instead seek redress from our local courts should there be indeed abuses or violations resulting from the government’s campaign versus narcotics, crusade against criminality and corruption,” he added.
The IPT recently issued the guilty verdict on Duterte and his government for “various crimes against humanity” and “war crimes” against Filipinos “on a daily basis.”
Among the witnesses against Duterte were Australian missionary nun Patricia Fox, Sultan Hamidullah Atar of Marawi City, and other individuals who testified via video message.
The indictment cited violations of civil and political rights through extrajudicial killings, massacres, arbitrary arrests, torture, political persecution, and rights violations arising from the imposition of martial law in Mindanao.
The IPT is a global court convened by the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the IBON International, and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines./PN
