We wish to address US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to the Philippines on Nov. 12-13 and the challenges for US policies resulting from the Duterte administration’s war on drugs. We believe the US government cannot maintain a foreign policy that ignores human rights violations, rather one that upholds respect for human rights and due process of the law. It is abundantly clear that the Duterte administration does not fulfill those principles.
The US Department of State 2016 Human Rights Report on the Philippines summarized the human rights issues with the war on drugs: “Since July police and unknown vigilantes have killed more than 6,000 suspected drug dealers and users as the government pursued a policy aimed at eliminating illegal drug activity in the country by the end of the year.
“Extrajudicial killings have been the chief human rights concern in the country for many years and they increased sharply over the past year.”
The number of killings since President Duterte took office is now reported by human rights groups to be in excess of 13,000.
Amnesty International, in their January 2017 report “If You Are Poor, You Are Killed,” stated: “Under President Duterte’s rule, the national police are breaking laws they are supposed to uphold while profiting from the murder of impoverished people the government was supposed to uplift. The same streets Duterte vowed to rid of crime are now filled with bodies of people illegally killed by his own police.”
In September, the UN Commission on Human Rights completed a Universal Periodic Review of the Philippines. One of the final actions in that process was a statement signed by the US and 38 other countries that among other things said: “We urge the government of the Philippines to take all necessary measures to bring these killings to an end and to cooperate with the international community to pursue appropriate investigations into these incidents, in keeping with universal principles of democratic accountability and the rule of law.”
We ask President Trump that he expresses concern for the thousands of killings and climate of impunity associated with the war on drugs, that he urges the Philippine government to take all necessary measures to bring these killings to an end and to cooperate with the international community to pursue appropriate investigations into these incidents, in keeping with universal principles of democratic accountability and the rule of law.
TIM MCGLOIN and PAUL BLOOM, cocoordinators, Ecumenical Advocacy Network on the Philippines, timlinmcg@msn.com