Cayetano hits HRW for 'misleading' int’l community

MANILA --- The government on Saturday slammed New York-based rights observer Human Rights Watch for supposedly "misleading" the international community with a report saying the country is in "worst human rights crisis" under the Duterte administration.

"We will not allow Human Rights Watch to portray an unfair and unjust image of our country nor will we let it question the strength of our democracy," Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano said in a statement.

"Democracy has never been more alive in the Philippines as we finally have a government that we can really say is of the people and for the people and not for the rich and the powerful alone," he added.

In its World Report 2018 released Thursday, HRW said President Rodrigo Duterte dragged the Philippines into a serious human rights crisis since the dictatorship of late Ferdinand Marcos, whom Duterte had praised in the past.

The group said that aside from staggering death toll in the war on drugs, the government had also frustrated independent investigations to establish a "transparent" tally of drug-related killings.

HRW claimed that 12,000 people have been killed since Duterte unleashed his deadly drug war, a figure that way exceeds government data that placed the number of casualties to 3,968 as of December 27 last year.

In the same statement, Cayetano dared HRW to show proof that all 12,000 fatalities were victims of the government's antinarcotic campaign.