Palace says call of UN for an international probe an ''outrageous interference on Philippines sovereignty''
Malacanang on Saturday slammed the latest call by 11 Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations (UN) for an international probe saying it’s not only “intellectually challenged but an outrageous interference on Philippine sovereignty”.
“The reasons foisted by them for the aforesaid investigation have been discredited and repudiated by the very nation they pretend to care about,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
“The Philippines is a working vibrant democracy in this part of the world. It has demonstrated strength and resilience in exercising the democratic rights outlined by the Constitution through the various institutions, with their respective allocation of power, geared toward the promotion of general welfare,” he added.
Panelo warned enemies of the state and their supporters from foreign soil no amount of destructive narratives against the government will envelope it with the appearance of pretended truth to hoodwink the Filipino people in embracing it.
“PRRD’s ( President Rodrigo Roa Duterte) war against illegal drugs is pursuant to the primary duty of the state to preserve and protect the people. Law enforcement authorities operate on strict protocols. Any deviation from it is met with the unyielding strong arm of the law with no transgressors immune from it,” he said.
“The judiciary sees to it that the law is applied equally to all, bar none,” Panelo added.
Panelo said the 11 UN Special Rapporteurs' act of peddling “a biased and absolutely false recital of facts, adulterated with malicious imputations against the constituted authorities, smacks of unpardonable intrusions on our sovereignty”.
“All these special rapporteurs can present are general allegations culled from false information emanating from the purveyors of status quo ante the Duterte presidency,” he said.
He said these foreign propagandists, masquerading as human right protectors are forgetting that allegations are not proof.
“One or two of them have tried this tact using some gullible if not biased loyal and foreign media, sowing the seeds of negative force and perpetuating them. They used the art of continuing miscommunication to clothe them with believability,” Panelo said.
Panelo said surveys have demolished the false if not adulterated news.
“The Filipino people have spoken anew, via the just concluded elections. Those who have spoken against the campaign on illegal drugs and human rights record of this President have been overwhelmingly rejected by the Filipino electorate,” he said.
“They have been resoundingly beaten in the polls. These special rapporteurs should by this time realise that they, who believed in the untruthful advocacies of the electorally vanquished pretenders, have likewise been demolished, beyond redemption,” he added.
Last Friday, Agnes Callamard (extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions), Meskerem Geset Techane (chair of the working group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice), Hilal Elver (right to food), Michel Forst (situation of human rights defenders), David Kaye (promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression), Clément Nyaletsossi Voulé (rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association), José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez (working group on arbitrary detention), Dainius Pras (right to health), Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (rights of indigenous people), Dubravka Šimonovi (violence against women, its causes and consequences) and Diego García-Sayán (independence of judges and lawyers) called for an independent investigation into what they called a sharp deterioration in the situation of human rights in the Philippines.
They urged the UN Human Rights Council to launch a probe into the alleged human rights violations in the Philippines after they recorded a big number of unlawful deaths and police killings in the context of a so-called war on drugs as well as killings of human rights defenders.
Also stressed is the decision of the Philippines to withdraw from the International Criminal Court is the “last of many actions demonstration that the government is seeking to evade scrutiny and reject accountability.”
The 47 member states of UN Human Rights Council are set to open a three-week session on June 24. Ella Dionisio/DMS
