HRW: Govt’s distraction strategy sidelines demand for accountability

FILE: On Saturday, Cayetano attacked HRW for supposedly “misleading” the international community with the report saying the Philippines is in the “worst human rights crisis” under the Duterte administration since the time of late President Ferdinand Marcos. (Photo: Human Rights Watch)

MANILA, Philippines — Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano over his statements against the New-York based human rights watchdog, saying that the Secretary is the manifestation of the government’s “distraction strategy” to sideline demand for accountability and to silence critics of the administration’s drug war.

On Saturday, Cayetano attacked HRW for supposedly “misleading” the international community with the report saying the Philippines is in the “worst human rights crisis” under the Duterte administration since the time of late President Ferdinand Marcos.

Cayetano also accused the human rights watchdog of politicizing the drug war and not doing any research or study on the human rights situation in the country. The foreign affairs chief also hit HRW for “deliberately misrepresenting” the series of deaths in relation to the government’s drug war to create an “unfair and unjust image” of the country

In a dispatch, HRW’s Asia Division Deputy Director Phelim Kine said that the “groundless” accusation of Cayetano come as “no surprise,” even describing the latter as President Rodrigo Duterte’s “chief denier” of evidence related to the government’s crackdown against illegal drugs to extrajudicial killings.

“They are the latest manifestation of the government’s distraction strategy that appears aimed to sideline domestic and international demands for accountability for what nongovernmental organizations and media outlets estimate is a drug war death toll of more than 12,000 people over the past 18 months,” Kine said.

Kine added that Cayetano’s claims during the United Nations General Assembly in September that the war on drugs was a “necessary instrument” to protect human rights of Filipinos was “demonstrably false” and add “gross insult” to injury to the families of the anti-drug campaign’s victims.

“It also airbrushed Human Rights Watch and investigative journalists who have demonstrated that many of those deaths amount to extrajudicial killings by Philippine National Police personnel and their agents,” Kine said.

The deputy director also said HRW joins anti-drug war institutions and people including UN officials which he said as “targeted for harassment and intimidation” in their campaign to demand accountability for abuses linked to the drug war.

“What you won’t hear is Cayetano calling for justice for those thousands of deaths,” Kine said.

“The government has made no genuine efforts to seek accountability for drug war abuses. There have been no successful prosecutions or convictions of police implicated in the killings, despite compelling evidence.” Duterte has publicly vowed to pardon, reinstate, and promote officers convicted of extrajudicial killings,” he added.

Kine also reiterated the need for an UN-led international investigation of the killings to help expose the extent of the abuses and to determine possible targets for a criminal investigation, including possible prosecutions for crimes against humanity.

Earlier, HRW, in its World Report 2018, said that the Philippines is in the “worst human rights crisis” since late Pres. Marcos, citing that the crackdown against illegal drugs launched by the Duterte administration has killed an approximately 12,000 people since June 2016.

“President Rodrigo Duterte has plunged the Philippines into its worst human rights crisis since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s,” the report read.

“His ‘war on drugs,’ launched after he took office in June 2016, has claimed an estimated 12,000 lives of primarily poor urban dwellers, including children,” it added.

In making the report, HRW cited the depressing situations in the country in areas such as extrajudicial killings, attacks on human rights defenders, rights children, press freedom, the spread of HIV, sexual orientation and gender identity, terrorism and counter-terrorism, and relations with international actors.