Manila’s drug war under fire at UN rights council

Countries across the world put the Philippines on notice over its deadly drug war on Monday, demanding an end to extrajudicial killings by President Rodrigo Duterte’s security services.
Diplomats from all continents condemned the reported surge of deaths during so-called anti-drug operations, which have claimed thousands of lives since Duterte took office last year.
The Philippines was facing its regular review at the Geneva-based UN human rights council, where each country’s record is scrutinized every four years.
Monday’s session was especially “critical because of the sheer magnitude of the human rights calamity” since Duterte’s inauguration, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The meeting began with Filipino Senator Alan Cayetano, a Duterte ally, denouncing what he called a campaign by rights advocates and the media to distort perceptions of the government’s anti-drug effort.
“There is no new wave of killings in the Philippines,” Cayetano told the council.
He said the government’s enemies were using “a political tactic” of manipulating figures on extrajudicial killings to undermine the fight against a scourge that has poisoned Filipino society.
Cayetano also showed a video clip of Duterte vowing to put “drug lords ... below (the) ground”, an unusual move at the UN council where governments do not typically publicize death threats by their heads of state.
Canada called on Manila to “end extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests and detention, torture and harassment.”
Delegations from Australia, Brazil, France, Germany and Ghana, among others, made identical calls.
China however offered support to the Filipino firebrand, declaring drugs “the public enemy of mankind.”
A group of roughly 50 pro-Duterte supporters braved a light rain outside the UN earlier on Monday, hoisting placards proclaiming, “Duterte is not a mass murderer.”
Foreign governments and UN officials are free to criticise the president, protest organiser, Dexi Jimenez said, but added that they need to understand “the war on drugs has gained (him) excellent ratings” in public opinion polls.
Duterte was elected largely on a law-and-order platform in which he promised to eradicate illegal drugs by killing tens of thousands of people.
Since then, police have reported killing 2,692 people in anti-drug operations.
They say unspecified parties have murdered another 1,847 people in drug-related incidents, while 5,691 other violent deaths are under investigation.
In a major report on the drug war in February, Amnesty International accused police of shooting defenceless people, paying assassins to murder addicts and stealing from those they killed.
Duterte has previously boasted of taking part in killings.
Meanwhile, Duterte kept his “excellent” trust rating for a fourth consecutive quarter in an opinion poll, with four-fifths of Filipino’s giving him the highest score in a survey that focuses on personality rather than policy.
Pollster Social Weather Stations has been tracking trust ratings of Duterte since December 2015, when he signed up for a presidential election that he won six months later. Duterte started off with a 47 percent trust rating and his peak was 84 percent a week before he took office late in June.
Eighty percent of the 1,200 Filipinos surveyed in the first quarter this year by SWS said they have “much trust” in the firebrand leader, a one percentage point drop from December.
Eleven percent said they were undecided and 10 percent have “little trust” in the former mayor from the southern Philippines.
The survey was conducted from March 25 to 28 and was released at the weekend. It did not ask respondents to give a reason for their ratings.
Based on SWS methodology for net trust ratings, a score of 70 and above is considered excellent, 50 to 69 is very good, 30-49 good and 10-29 moderate.
SWS differentiates trust ratings from satisfaction ratings. Trust gauges public sentiment about a personality while satisfaction is related to an individual’s performance related to his position or duty.

Source: Arab News