Grace Poe urges Duterte to heed US on human rights

Senator Grace Poe. PHOTO FROM SEN. GRACE POE’S OFFICE

Sen. Grace Poe yesterday called on the Duterte administration  to respect human rights, noting how a country’s rights record weighs heavily on the endowment of international assistance.

The United States’ recently halted its sale of assault rifles to the Philippines, citing human rights concerns in President Duterte’s so-called war on drugs, which has resulted in over 3,000 dead in four months.

Sought for comment, Poe said the United States has long maintained a policy “to take into consideration human rights concerns with whatever assistance it extends to a country,” including weapons.

“It would do well for the interest of the Philippines and its citizens around the globe to maintain our country’s good standing with respect to our relations with other countries, including the European Union too, by upholding human rights in the effort to combat illegal drugs,” she told the Inquirer.

“Human rights and the antidrug efforts need not be mutually exclusive,” said Poe, an advocate of greater police accountability, including a call to install a civilian as head of the Philippine National Police Internal Affairs Service.

Greater repercussions

For his part, Sen. Antonio Trillanes warned of greater repercussions wrought by Mr. Duterte’s bloody antidrug war.

“That’s just the start. Things would probably get worse in the coming months as our countrymen get hit from different directions at different levels,” said Trillanes when reached via text message yesterday.

“But to be clear, contrary to President Duterte’s big lie, the US didn’t start this. He did, when he started killing his own people and didn’t want to be accountable for it,” said Trillanes, a member of the Senate’s minority bloc.

The US State Department stopped the sale of up to 27,000 rifles to the Philippines after US Sen. Ben Cardin, a democrat and member of the US Senate’s foreign relations committee, raised the Duterte administration’s questionable human rights record, including rising extrajudicial killings in the country.

America’s persistent human rights call has drawn the President’s ire, and the leader has fired back with expletives against the longtime Philippine ally, including harsh words at US President Barack Obama, and a declaration to toe a different foreign policy line from that of the country’s former colonizer.

The President also cussed and threatened UN investigators despite the country being a signatory to international covenants to uphold human rights.

After Mr. Duterte likened himself to Hitler and said he would not mind killing up to three million Filipinos, the head prosecutor of the international court at The Hague warned Mr. Duterte that he could be hauled to the international court for crimes against humanity.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief who has expressed support for the government’s bloody war on crime suspects, has said the stalled arms deal showed how the US could “bully” the Philippines.