PALACE: U2’S BONO RIGHT; HUMAN RIGHTS ‘SACRED’

Malacañang “actually agrees” with U2 frontman Bono that there should be no compromise when it comes to human rights, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said on Wednesday.

“[H]uman rights should really be upheld and that’s a policy of the government, that we should protect every person of this country because human rights [are] sacred,” Andanar told reporters.

Bono, whose real name is Paul Hewson, is in the Philippines for a concert and was asked of his impression of the human rights situation in the country.

The Irish rocker on Tuesday said that people sometimes made what they thought were compromises for the sake of progress.

“And I would just say, you can’t compromise on human rights. That’s my soft message to President Duterte,” he said.

Andanar noted that Bono has been a long time member of Amnesty International, which has been critical of what have widely been described as extrajudicial killings related to President Duterte’s relentless war on drugs.

The Palace official said that the matter of human rights encompassed a lot of things, including health, freedom of the press and economic freedom, and that the President had taken action on these issues.

Mr. Duterte has signed the universal health care law and has issued an order for a freedom of information policy, Andanar said.

“It’s also part of human rights to have economic freedom,” he said, adding that government efforts have led to a drop in poverty incidence, from 23.3 percent in 2015 to 16.6 percent in 2018 .