Palace finds US State Department report inconsistent with Trump’s remark on PH drug war

FILE: Malacañang on Monday, April 23, said it would prefer to hold on to the previous statements of United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump about the Philippines’s war on drugs, after the US State Department report said “extrajudicial killings have been the chief human rights concern in the country for many years.” (ACE MORANDANTE/PRESIDENIAL PHOTO)

Malacañang on Monday, April 23, said it would prefer to hold on to the previous statements of United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump about the Philippines’s war on drugs, after the US State Department report said “extrajudicial killings have been the chief human rights concern in the country for many years.”

In a Palace briefing, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. said that it was not easy for him to reconcile the report of the US State Department and Trump’s praises on President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-illegal drug campaign.

“I personally heard the discussion between President Trump and President Duterte when they were here in the Philippines during the ASEAN Summit and I think I heard words coming from President Trump praising President Duterte including the war on drugs. If I am not mistaken, President Trump said he [Duterte] knows what he’s doing in the Philippines,” Roque explained.

“So I do not know how to reconcile the State Department report with the actual statement of the President. But for now, we’re going with the statement of President Trump that we all heard from the mouth of President Trump,” he added.

In its “Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2017,” the US State Department noted that “concerns about police impunity increased significantly following the sharp increase in police killings.”

“The government investigated a limited number of reported human rights abuses, including abuses by its own forces, paramilitaries, and insurgent and terrorist groups,” it added.

The annual report also said that Duterte “publicly rejected” criticisms of police killings but said authorities would “investigate any actions taken outside the rule of law.”

“The most significant human rights issues included: killings by security forces, vigilantes and others allegedly connected to the government, and by insurgents; torture and abuse of prisoners and detainees by security forces; often harsh and life threatening prison conditions; warrantless arrests by security forces and cases of apparent government disregard for legal rights and due process; political prisoners; killings of and threats against journalists; official corruption and abuse of power; threats of violence against human rights activists; violence against women; and forced labor,” the report read.

Responding to this report, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano stressed that the government’s crackdown on illegal drugs promote the welfare and protect the human rights of all Filipinos, adding that this campaign is “guided by the rule of law embodied in our Constitution, which also enshrines the country’s long-standing tradition of upholding human rights.”

“We do not need others who think they know better than us Filipinos to tell us what to do. As a sovereign nation, the Philippines deserves the same kind of respect we have been extending to our friends in the international community,” Cayetano noted.

The European (EU) Parliament last week adopted a resolution calling on the Philippines to put an end to extrajudicial killings in its drug war. However, the Palace find this resolution “unfortunate” as the EU Parliament once again interfered with the affairs of the Philippine state.

Roque earlier reiterated that the Duterte’s administration does not engage in so-called extrajudicial killings, refuting claims that 12,000 have already been killed since Duterte started his anti-illegal drugs campaign upon his assumption of office in 2016.