Manila’s drug war under fire at UN rights council

GENEVA: Countries across the world put the Philippines on notice over its deadly drug war on Monday, demanding an end to extrajudicial killings by President Rodrigo Duterte’s security services.

Diplomats from all continents condemned the reported surge of deaths during so-called anti-drug operations, which have claimed thousands of lives since Duterte took office last year.

The Philippines was facing its regular review at the Geneva-based UN human rights council, where each country’s record is scrutinized every four years.

Monday’s session was especially “critical because of the sheer magnitude of the human rights calamity” since Duterte’s inauguration, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The meeting began with Filipino Senator Alan Cayetano, a Duterte ally, denouncing what he called a campaign by rights advocates and the media to distort perceptions of the government’s anti- drug effort.

“There is no new wave of killings in the Philippines,” Cayetano told the council.

He said the government’s enemies were using “a political tactic” of manipulating figures on extrajudicial killings to undermine the fight against a scourge that has poisoned Filipino society.

Cayetano also showed a video clip of Duterte vowing to put “drug lords ... below (the) ground”, an unusual move at the UN council where governments do not typically publicize death threats by their heads of state.

Canada called on Manila to “end extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests and detention, torture and harassment.”

Delegations from Australia, Brazil, France, Germany and Ghana, among others, made identical calls.

China however offered support to the Filipino firebrand, declaring drugs “the public enemy of mankind.”