Palace: Report on spike on land activists’ killings ‘unfair’

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo denied the report of UK-based group Global Witness claiming that the Philippines is now considered the deadliest country in the world for land defenders with 30 killings in the country last year and at least 113 since the start of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term in 2016. (File Photo: Office of the Presidential Spokesperson/Facebook)

MANILA — It is unfair to blame the death of at least 113 environmental activists and land defenders on the Duterte administration, Malacañang said on Wednesday.

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo denied the report of UK-based group Global Witness claiming that the Philippines is now considered the deadliest country in the world for land defenders with 30 killings in the country last year and at least 113 since the start of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term in 2016.

Panelo said Global Witness made it appear that it is the Duterte administration to blame for the fate of land and environmental defenders when it failed to look into communist insurgency.

“Take a look at page 27 of the report, with one of its illustrations as the Sagay incident, where it blamed the agents of the State for what happened to the farmers but deliberately failing or consciously omitting the local communist movement and armed conflicts as critical components of those deaths,” Panelo said in a statement.

He was referring to the death of nine sugar workers who were shot while eating dinner in a hut in Sagay, Negros Occidental on October 20, 2018.

Reports showed that the group was engaged in a Land Cultivation Area (LCA) or “bungkalan” activity in the area.

“As I previously pointed out, many of our local authorities, security forces, and even tribal leaders died protecting land rights against communist insurgents who want to control these areas,” he added.

He also explained that Duterte also had to undertake measures to maintain peace and order in the affected localities because it is his constitutional duty to serve and protect Filipinos.

“Blaming a government with baseless conjectures for a domestic problem which it seeks to resolve flies in the face of impartial observation and circumspection, and even causes a division among its people,” Panelo said.

“In this case, it is worse as it is being committed by one who is a stranger to our country’s internal affairs,” he added.

Nothing new

The Palace official described Global Witness “as a purveyor of falsity and a subservient machinery for political propaganda”.

“There is nothing new to its sham assertion which mimics the recurring chants of the usual derogators of PRRD,” Panelo said in a statement.

“The substance of the report, for one, is a mere rehash of what the organization stated recently (July 2019), which became the subject of an editorial in The New York Times last August 1, 2019, and which this representation has sufficiently addressed,” he added.

Panelo explained that the group had to resort to “repetition” because its original manifesto did not accomplish its goal of tainting the integrity of the administration.

“This is not news. And no wonder discerning media outfits did not even bother publishing any account about it,” Panelo said.

On Tuesday, Panelo also denied that Duterte’s “aggressive rhetoric” may have made the risk faced by environmental activists and land defenders in the country worse.

“I do not think so. You know, when somebody dies, we have to investigate whether or not that concerns whatever advocacy he has or that is a personal thing,” Panelo said.