Unwelcome here

Agnes Callamard, Michael Forst, and Diego Garcia Sayan are three very confused people. As so-called United Nations experts on human rights they jointly issued the following statement: "The Philippines is required to protect its population, and its government has a positive obligation to take effective measures to protect the right to life. Failure to do so is a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Please read the statement again. Then read it again and again. Pray tell if there is anything in that statement that the government of the Philippines is not doing. The government has launched an aggressive war on illegal drugs to protect its citizens. It carries out the war as a positive obligation and effective measure to protect the right of its citizens to live in security and peace. By making sure it wages war on drugs, it violated no international covenant on whatever rights.

So what the heck are Callamard, Forst, and Sayan so upset and noisy about? Do they want a raise in their salaries? Because that seems to be the only thing they are good at. Callamard in particular is especially notorious for calling attention to herself by making wild accusations she is unable to support with hard evidence. Has no one in the entire overpaid United Nations organization ever told her that when you make an accusation you are expected to prove your allegations?

But what has Callamard done? She turns on the TV, picks up the newspaper, reads about the aggressive Philippine war on illegal drugs, and then comes to the conclusion that Philippine security forces are just picking up innocent Filipinos and killing them in cold blood. And then realizing belatedly that she needs something to make her assume some air of credibility, she comes to the Philippines, stays for a few days, talks to critics of the government, and then launches her harangue.

With apologies to Shakespeare, what a piece of work this woman is...so full of sound and fury, and yet signifies nothing. No wonder the Philippine government has made it expressly clear that she is unwelcome here. For it is not that the government cannot be criticized, only that if it must be criticized, at least criticize with some basis.

But Callamard and her ilk have not gone beyond merely waving a list of numbers representing the toll in the Philippine drug war. A list containing numbers does not mean anything. If Callamard wishes to tie those numbers to extrajudicial killings then she needs to do more than just call press conferences or issue statements. She needs to investigate. And that is something she has not done.

And why is Callamard fixated on the Philippines? Are not human rights violations being committed elsewhere, with even more frequency, and on a scale even more staggering? On the matter of genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya, Callamard issued a statement as limp as a thin slice of salami. She did not even call for a slap on the wrist of Aung San Suu Kyi, probably because she is a woman and a Nobel laureate.

Callamard is the quintessential Western demagogue, picky in the choice of causes to espouse, hollow and hypocritical in her measure of the world. She is of the type that sees everything wrong when Third World governments take strong and aggressive measures to solve their own problems but says nothing when Western powers prop up dictatorial governments or carry out interventionist moves to install one, for as long as it suits their interests.

‘Callamard is the quintessential Western demagogue, picky in the choice of causes to espouse, hollow and hypocritical in her

measure of the world.’