Karapatan questions ‘good rating’ given to gov’t on human rights protection

Cristina “Tinay” Palabay, secretary general of Karapatan (Photo from her Facebook page)

A human-rights group questioned the “good rating” given by the Social Weather Station (SWS) to the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte regarding human rights protection despite mounting accusations of increasing death toll in the government’s war on drugs.

READ: Duterte admin gets ‘very good’ rating in protecting human rights

“If adherence to people’s rights is the basis for these ratings, if the number of Filipinos killed and the number of communities bombed and displaced are taken into account, then Duterte’s performance is a staggering failure,” Karapatan Secretary-General Tinay Palabay said in a statement.

“Not only has he and his state security forces perpetrated and aggravated rights abuses, he has also tacitly allowed impunity, cradling his police and soldiers to protect them from prosecution under our own laws,” she added.

Duterte got a “very good” net satisfaction rating in protecting human rights in the latest Social Weather Station (SWS) survey.

The administration received a +55 net rating for human-rights protection as it maintained an overall “very good” net public satisfaction rating for four consecutive quarters.

Local and international human-rights activists have criticized the government’s bloody war on drugs, which has killed thousands of suspected drug criminals. The campaign has recently drawn public outrage with the controversial death of 17-year-old student, Kian delos Santos, in the hands of Caloocan City policemen.

Palabay said reality on the ground “cannot be simply erased by satisfaction ratings.”

“Surveys are inconsequential, especially if the civil, political, economic, and social rights of the poor, majority of Filipinos are continuously being violated on the ground,” Palabay added. JPV