De Lima thanks US senators for approving sanctions for her ‘persecutors’

A copy of the US Senate Resolution 142.

MANILA, Philippines — Senator Leila De Lima on Friday again thanked some United States senators who rallied behind her by calling on their colleagues to approve a resolution urging the White House to impose sanctions against her alleged persecutors.

On Friday, the US senators-authors issued a joint statement after US Senate Resolution 142 was unanimously adopted.

“The approval, in unanimous consent, of US Senate Resolution 142 is a watershed in the history of keeping democracy and human rights accountability in the country and the role the US play in ensuring it,” De Lima said in a statement.

The US Senate last January 8 approved SR 142, titled, “A resolution condemning the Government of the Philippines for its continued detention of Senator Leila De Lima, calling for her immediate release, and for other purposes.”

The resolution invokes the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which allows the US government to impose sanctions on foreign officials implicated in human rights abuses, freeze their assets, and ban their entry to the US.

“The case against me, apart from being fake and invented, has no internal legal consistency or integrity altogether and has been fueled by tyrannical powers and alignment of greed and political opportunism in the Philippine politics,” De Lima said.

“I sincerely thank the granite resolve of Senators Durbin, Markey, Rubio, Blackburn, Coons, Leahy and Cardin, and the rest of the US Senate,” she added.

De Lima has been in detention at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center since February 2017 over drug charges.