BY LUIS BUENAFLOR JR.
” Human rights advocacy is the latest fashion accessory/trend among the Frappuccino infused “woke millennials” and social climbers.”
IT’S BEEN a week or so and they’re still talking about it so I might as well join the fun.
I do find most of the arguments of the so-called “woke millennials” rather ridiculous, really just a bunch of airheads trying to impress using high falutin words that they don’t really understand.
Nevermind the irrelevant and obsolete so-called leftists and the pseudo-communists, they already have an ulterior motive; besides, they’re just trying to be relevant.
The “flavor of the month”, of course, is:
The United Nations Human Rights Council has approved a resolution, sponsored by Iceland, to launch an independent investigation into alleged crimes committed during the Philippine government’s war on drugs. The resolution was approved with a narrow margin yesterday, with 18 nations voting in its favor, 15 abstaining and 14 opposing.
I’ll just park this: Sovereignty is the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme authority over some polity.
That by itself is already self-explanatory. The Philippines is a sovereign nation with a fully functioning government including all institutions. So, anything an outside body will do or intends to do is an intrusion or interference in our country’s affairs.
Here’s a simple illustration: your neighbor announces to the barangay that he intends to enter your house and dictate to you how to run your life including your children’s, and how you will have sex with your wife.
Accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable.
That we are a democratic country with a democratically-elected President means that our President Rodrigo Duterte is accountable only to the citizens of this country, not to the United Nations Human Rights Council or the United Nations itself.
I believe he is accountable to God, with no offense meant to the atheists.
So, all that nonsense that the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to launch an investigation on the Philippine’s war on drugs is not an affront to our sovereignty but an accountability is just that – nonsense.
Of course, our Foreign Affairs secretary Teodoro Locsin made it clear that the Philippines rejects this intervention by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Here are excerpts from a speech read on his behalf during the UNHRC’s 41st regular session in Geneva, Switzerland:
This resolution was not universally adopted. Therefore, its validity is highly questionable. It does not represent the will of the Council, much less that of the developing countries who are always the target of such resolutions. Western countries pushed for this resolution in the confidence that the world has forgotten what they did and what should have been done to them had there been a Human Rights Council. It was pushed with the arrogance that developing countries must not stand up to them even if we can and as we hereby do. There will be consequences.
But let us be clear on this: this resolution is not a triumph of human rights but a travesty of them that should honor the character of the author and co-sponsors of the resolution.
It is an example of how these countries – they who are least entitled to make such accusations, incited by false information from sources peddling their untruths for money, or who have allowed themselves to be played by the ill will of a few – have undermined the Human Rights Council to advance their agenda and target a government that’s hostile to the very things they have done and continue to do, and about which there is overwhelming proof.
Do not presume to threaten states with accountability for a tough approach to crushing crime, at which some of your countries are complicit at worst and tolerant at best. You don’t have the wherewithal, so all you can do is insult. The United Nations is a collection of sovereignties and not a sovereign collective.
Thus, the Philippines rejects this resolution. It cannot, in good conscience, abide by it. We will not accept a politically partisan and one-sided resolution, so detached from the truth on the ground. It comes straight from the mouth of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, “First the judgment, then the proof.”
The Philippines renews its solemn responsibility to protect the law-abiding against the lawless by any means efficient to achieve the defining purpose for the existence and expense of a state. To that responsibility, my President has made an iron, unwavering and total commitment; and it will not be weakened by this ill-fated resolution.
Our foreign policy was summed up as being “Friend to all, enemy to none.” In the face of today’s changing realities, I refined this to “Friend to friends, enemy to enemies, and a worse enemy to false friends.” We renew our solidarity with our true friends who have stood by us in this farce. But we will not tolerate any form of disrespect or acts of bad faith. There will be consequences; far-reaching ones.
And bravo to that!/PN
