Palace describes leftist group’s complaint as propaganda

PRESIDENTIAL Spokesperson Harry Roque said the complaints filed by a leftist group against President Rodrigo Duterte over alleged extrajudicial killings in the country only serve propaganda purposes.

On Saturday, local human rights watchdog Karapatan sent to United Nations (UN) special rapporteurs Agnes Callamard and Michel Forst a second batch of complaints on the killings of 25 individuals allegedly by state agents in the course of the administration’s counterinsurgency campaign.

Karapatan filed its first complaint before the UN on April 10. That time, the group accused the government of being responsible for the death of 47 individuals.

Roque, a former human rights lawyer, said the group can avail of domestic remedial mechanisms first, instead of going directly to the UN. For instance, the group could file with the Supreme Court for a Writ of Amparo.

“It’s useless to go to go the UN without filing cases before the fiscal’s office. Filing directly with the UN is only for propaganda purposes because there are institutions in the Philippines that could address it,” Roque said in a statement.

“We therefore hope that they will file their complaints in the proper courts, not before the so-called human rights rapporteurs who have politicized views of the Philippines’ campaign against illegal drugs,” he added.

He said Karapatan knows the cases would not prosper in the UN.

“It is the political mileage they are after in pursuit of their continued intent to malign this administration, through the special rapporteurs who only seem too willing to act based on fake political information,” Roque said.

He reminded Karapatan Administrative Order No. 35 created an inter-agency committee to address extra-legal killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other grave violations of the right to life, liberty and security of persons.

The group alleged that it documented 104 victims of extrajudicial killings under Duterte’s counter-insurgency program from July 2016 to October 2017.

Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay was quick to belie Roque’s allegations.

“We do not file cases or complaints for mere publicity purposes. People are not mere facts in a press release. We have filed several complaints before the UN Human Rights Council and engaged with UN independent experts throughout regimes - from the administrations of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Benigno Aquino III and up to this current government. We pursue these complaints doggedly as we accompany the victims and their kin in the options that they have taken in pursuing justice,” Palabay said in a statement.

She said Roque should instead look at himself in the mirror when he talks about people or groups using human rights cases to seek fame in the UN or elsewhere.

“Because for human rights workers of Karapatan, what we need is concrete action to investigate the cases of human rights violations and for measures to ensure that these violations will not happen again,” Palabay said.

She stressed that exhaustion of domestic remedies is also relative to the compliance record of governments like the Philippines to hold the perpetrators accountable, “given the notoriously tortuous court proceedings and slow turning of wheels of the justice system in the country.”

She said it is “futile and unjust to tell victims and their families for five or ten or twenty years to wait for a local court ruling on the accountability of State forces, before they can avail of international HR mechanisms.”

President Rodrigo Duterte’s ended his cordial relations with leftist organizations with the termination of the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), political arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines, because of the continued attacks staged by its armed wing, New People’s Army.

Following the cancellation, the President branded the communist rebels as terrorists and verbally ordered their, and their “legal fronts’”, arrest.