Trump’s signature on the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill 2020 which is part of the US government’s $1.4-trillion budget., authorizes the US secretary of State, currently Mike Pompeo, to prohibit foreign officials to whom he has “credible information [to] have been involved in the wrongful imprisonment” of De Lima “who was arrested in the Philippines in 2017.”
Specifically, the said provision in the section labelled “Prohibition on Entry” states that the US Secretary of State “shall apply subsection (c).” Subsection (c) is the US law, Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act that sanctions those the US deems to be human rights offenders.
While the Philippines was specifically mentioned, the ban also applies to the Egyptian government officials to “wrongfully” detained an American citizen, as well as to the government officials of Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia who jailed locally-employed staff of a US diplomatic mission or a US citizen or national.
Earlier, De Lima cited an initial list of persons whom she said were involved in her arrest and detention. The list is as follows:
- President Rodrigo Roa Duterte
- Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo
- Former Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) official Margaux “Mocha” Uson
- Blogger (For the Motherland) Sass Sasot
- Blogger (Thinking Pinoy) RJ Nieto
- Former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez
- Former Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II
- Solicitor General Jose Calida
- Public Attorneys Office (PAO) chief Persida Acosta
- Sandra Cam
- Dante Jimenez
- Rey Umali
- Rudy Fariñas
It can be recalled that in late September, Panelo was unfazed by the US entry ban.
“I’ve been there several times over,” he told the reporters, further explaining that the US is not the only country “that you can go to and enjoy the sights and the sounds.”
Panelo added, “I cannot understand where this Senator Leahy and another one, Senator Durbin, are coming from. The problem with them is that they listen to the critics of the administration and believe what they hear or what they receive as info hook, line, and sinker.”
It was US Senators Dick Durbin and Patrick Leahy who filed the amendment that was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Leahy’s camp responded to Panelo’s statement through an e-mail sent to ABS-CBN News in October.
“As Mr. Panelo knows, human rights are universal, and each of us has a responsibility to defend them. Rather than respond to his personal attacks, we would refer him to the Trump administration’s latest human rights report of the US State Department on the Philippines,” Leahy’s spokesperson David Carle wrote.
Carle further said that De Lima’s case “attracted widespread domestic and international attention, with many observers denouncing the charges as politically motivated.”
“If the evidence is as strong as Mr. Panelo claims, then the government should promptly produce it in a fair, public trial, as due process requires, so Senator De Lima can defend herself,” Carle added.