Several times in the last four years, whenever he talked about his “war on drugs” carried out by the Philippine National Police and the thousands of killings attributed to it, President Duterte insistently denied the killings were state-sponsored, or that they had been instigated by him. Last Monday night, however, addressing the people on state…
Tags: President Duterte
Discredited accusation repeated after 14 years
Last week I wrote about President Duterte’s principal adviser on intelligence owning up before Congress that he had shared posts on social media from four spurious Facebook pages, without verifying the source and veracity of the information. That admission, I stressed, put into question the credibility of intelligence input in government national policy-making. Recently Facebook…
A cruel irony
Could Senator Leila de Lima be right? Was President Rodrigo Duterte’s speech as “plastic and (as) fake as the dolomite beach”? Did he not really mean what he said? Senator De Lima was primarily alluding to Mr. Duterte’s pre-recorded speech before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which she compared to the P389.8-million “white sand”…
Does dubious intel input guide policy-making?
It’s a legitimate public concern to raise such a question, in light of what the designated “principal adviser to the President on intelligence” has owned up to: that he had been sharing posts on social media without verifying the source and the veracity of the information. Verifying and validating data is a basic duty of…
Rights groups to exhaust other venues to hold Duterte accountable
“There are ways forward. But certainly, the international community has a role in attaining justice, especially [since] the domestic mechanisms are severely compromised,”
Farmer in Kabankalan City beheaded, rights groups alarmed at increasing abuse cases in Negros
Guillen’s brother said that the victim went missing when he returned to his house after they have been advised by the military to evacuate the place because of an encounter between government forces and the New People’s Army. Reports say that his decomposing decapitated body was found at the base of a ravine near the encounter site in barangay Tan-awan.
Abetting the information crisis
The Duterte regime’s denying the public access to government information prevents the populace’s meaningful involvement in the politics and governance of this country as the essential condition to bringing about the social, economic and political changes needed to bring it to the 21st century — changes Mr. Duterte was promising during his 2016 campaign for the Presidency, and in anticipation of which he was elected by 33% of the electorate
Actions urged to follow Duterte’s speech at UN
But over the years, Duterte has attacked human rights advocacy groups as “enemies of the state,” also church leaders, priests, pastors and nuns. He even berated the Commission on Human Rights (a constitutional body) for criticizing certain policies or pronouncements of his government. He talked (confusedly or maliciously) of “detractors pass(ing) themselves off as human rights advocates while preying on the most vulnerable humans: even using children as soldiers or human shields in [armed] encounters.”
‘Weaponizing human rights?’ | Rights group refutes Duterte’s ‘lies’ at the UN assembly
“Duterte would rather discredit human rights defenders and institutions than acknowledge that there are extrajudicial killings and other violations in the Philippines. He continues to deny what the whole world has already come to recognize.”
EU Parliament backs human rights defenders in the Philippines
European lawmakers asked the Philippine authorities to “guarantee, in all circumstances, the physical and psychological integrity of all human rights defenders and journalists in the country, and to ensure that they can carry out their work in an enabling environment and without fear of reprisals.”
Legitimizing tyranny
HB 7137 is not just another attempt by Marcos idolaters to market an imagined past for mass consumption. Forgetting what really happened in history is the surest road to its repetition.