Lagman to ‘Bato’: No place for ‘disastrous hyperbole’ when human rights, civil liberties are at stake

MANILA, Philippines – Albay 1st District Rep. Edcel Lagman on Wednesday slammed Senator Ronaldo “Bato” dela Rosa after he defended President Rodrigo Duterte’s “kill, kill, kill” statements.

“There is no place for disastrous ‘hyperbole’ when the people’s human rights and civil liberties are at stake,” Lagman, a human rights lawyer, said in a statement

He added that Duterte’s “deadly” order resulted in the separate but “simultaneous extrajudicial killing of nine crusading activists in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) who were not even combatants.”

Dela Rosa, a former chief of the Philippine National Police and the chief architect of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, earlier defended the President’s “kill, kill, kill” statement, saying these were just “hyperbolic” pronouncements.

“But he’s not saying: ‘Do what’s illegal as long as you can carry out my orders.’ I know he means well, and he means that all that he wants to happen should be legal,” Dela Rosa said.

The senator’s remarks came as Duterte, in a meeting with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), ordered the police and military to kill communist rebels.

National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr., also the concurrent NTF-Elcac vice-chairman, later backed Duterte’s order, saying defeating communist rebels should be the concern rather than upholding human rights.

Lagman, meanwhile, said Duterte has not recanted or tempered his lethal instruction which may escalate nationwide.

“Only the President’s apologists are vainly justifying his perilous statement, he said. Liezelle Soriano Roy, trainee

/MUF