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[av_heading heading=’ Alan hails Duterte’s human rights record at UN council’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
By Prince Golez, Manila Reporter
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Tuesday, May 9, 2017
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MANILA – Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano defended President Rodrigo Duterte’s human rights record, saying his government always “seeks to uphold the rule of law” in the face of claims that it supports deadly vigilante justice.
Cayetano came before the United Nations Human Rights Council equipped with a slide show and video excerpts of previous comments by Duterte about the Philippines’ fight against illegal drug trafficking.
Cayetano was speaking Monday at a review of Philippines human rights record at the council, part of a process known as the Universal Periodic Review of all 193 UN member states.
Human Rights Watch has urged the UN to denounce the Philippines’ “war on drugs” that it said has left over 7,000 suspected drug dealers and users dead since Duterte took office in June.
Meanwhile, Duterte critic Sen. Leila de Lima wished Cayetano, who led the country’s anti-illegal drugs campaign to the Universal Periodic Review, luck and hoped that he will not be eaten alive in Geneva, Switzerland.
“This early, said delegation is fooling itself that the international delegates to the periodic review are as stupid as the rest of the Malacanang cheering squad in their belief that they can pull of a magic trick and hide (President Rodrigo) Duterte’s regime’s record of extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses from the rest of the world,” de Lima said.
The former Justice secretary, a staunch critic of the government’s war on drugs, is currently detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame on drug trafficking charges.
De Lima warned her colleague against presenting a “sanitized version” of the state of human rights in the country.
“Cayetano’s audience this time is not a cyberspace inhabited by paid trolls and a bureaucracy made up of Duterte sycophants, but independent-minded envoys who are perfectly aware of the human rights situation in the Philippines,” the lady senator said.
Duterte’s vice presidential candidate in the 2016 May elections, Cayetano has voiced concern that the administration’s campaign against illegal drugs was wrongly portrayed in the international community.
“If only there was a less political, more unbiased, and fair way of describing what is happening in the Philippines, we will be having a more constructive discussion rather than groups throwing alternative facts and fake news,” he said.
The senator from Taguig also clarified that only 1,847 cases of the 9,432 reported cases of murder and homicide are drug-related. (With reports from AP/PN)
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