Vast blow to rights

Philippines slashes funding to watchdog amid killing spree

PHILIPPINE politicians have voted to slash annual funding for the nation’s human rights commission to just $25 in response to its investigations into President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly drug war, authorities said yesterday.

The House of Representatives action is the latest part of what critics say is a campaign by Mr Duterte and his allies to silence opposition to the crackdown, which has claimed thousands of lives and led rights groups to warn of a crime against humanity.

The House, one of two chambers of the Philippine Congress, cut the Commission on Human Rights allotment to 1000 pesos (about $A25) in the 3.8-trillion-peso national Budget Bill that it passed on second reading late Tuesday.

“This leads us on a direct path to dictatorship,” Senator Francis Pangilinan, leader of the Liberal Party, the country’s main opposition group, said yesterday.

Independent Senator Panfilo Lacson, a former Philippine police chief, told DZMM radio the Senate version of the Budget Bill had recommended 678 million pesos ($A16.5 million) for the rights body.

The commission is one of several independent government bodies set up by the Philippine constitution to check the power of the executive department, which controls the country’s police and military forces.

The body has been investigating some of the deaths of more than 3800 narcotics suspects killed by police and other drug enforcement agencies in what they have described as “legitimate” operations. The drug crackdown has triggered wider violence with thousands of other people having been killed in unexplained circumstances. Rights groups accuse authorities of running vigilante death squads, but the government denies this.

The Budget Bill has to be passed separately by the Senate, and Pangilinan vowed to block the House version.