Duterte’s recent threats vs drug suspects should prompt UN, ICC to hasten its drug war probe, says HRW

President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent threat against lives of drug offenders intensified the need for the United Nations and International Criminal Court to scrutinize the “bloody drug war” that he founded, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

It can be recalled that Duterte issued a “televised death threat” against detained drug suspects in Cebu City, advising them to “stay in jail if they want to live longer as it would be not healthy for them to go out of the facility.

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This statement, according to HRW Asia Division deputy director Phelim Kine, “should send a message to the ICC of the dire need for a preliminary examination into the killings and to the UN for a separate international inquiry.”

Kine also said that the results of the drug campaign since it was launched gives a “brutal lesson” that once individuals are considered a suspect, they end up being killed in “suspicious police buy-bust operations, or at the hands of unidentified gunmen” without undergoing due process, which is a “good reason for Duterte’s targets to be afraid.”

He added that Duterte’s threat may be “twisted” by his “spin doctors” as a mere joke but it is still a “clear message to police officers and other security force members that certain kinds of crimes not only can be committed with impunity but might even draw praise from the president.”

(DAILY NEWS ROUND UP FOR 05/ 30 /18)