{"id":5217,"date":"2018-07-31T21:58:08","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T11:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=5217"},"modified":"2018-07-31T21:58:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T11:58:08","slug":"un-human-rights-council-ask-ph-to-stop-killings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=5217","title":{"rendered":"UN Human Rights Council ask PH to stop killings"},"content":{"rendered":"

38 nations ask PH: Stop killings, probe abuses<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe Philippines is again come under fire from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after 38 nations reiterated their call on President Duterte to end the killings in its war on drugs. The UN body also slammed DU30\u2019s refusal to cooperate with the UNHRC in investigating rights abuses.<\/p>\n

Harry Roque, DU30\u2019s spokesman dismissed the petition, saying the government was already making its own assessment of the country\u2019s human rights situation and did not want foreigners to tell it what to do.<\/p>\n

The 38 nations, including Australia, the United States, and United Kingdom, also called on the Philippine government to stop harassing human rights defenders, journalists and the Commission on Human Rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe urge the government of the Philippines to take all necessary measures to bring killings associated with the campaign against illegal drugs to an end and cooperate with the international community to investigate all related deaths and hold perpetrators accountable,\u201d the UNHRC said in a statement issued on June 19.<\/p>\n

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said that the government had an inventory of cases of alleged drug suspects who were killed in the war on drugs \u201cto find out whether the right process was followed or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means we do not need foreigners to call on us because we are already doing it, even if there is no such call,\u201d Roque added.<\/p>\n

The Philippine National Police maintained that the government did not have any policy \u201cto kill drug suspects\u201d in their operations.<\/p>\n

Police spokesperson Senior Supt. Benigno Durana denied that policemen abused their mandate as he urged the UNHRC to refer its complaints to the Solicitor General Calida.<\/p>\n

Policemen, he said, have the \u201cright to defend themselves and use appropriate amount of force to effect arrests of usually armed and drug-crazed suspects.\u201d<\/p>\n

38 Countries signed the statement<\/p>\n

Apart from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, the other signatories to the statement were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Macedonia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The countries issued basically the same call against President Duterte\u2019s brutal anti-narcotics campaign during the UNHRC\u2019s sessions in September 2017 and in March this year. Iceland drafted the latest statement.<\/p>\n

The UNHRC, the influential rights body that counts the Philippines as one of its 47-member countries, meets thrice a year in Geneva.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also concerned over reports of harassment of persons exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and expression, including human rights defenders and journalists\u2026members of the Commission on Human Rights,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n

Duterte had lashed out at the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, several times. He resisted her calls to investigate rights abuses and extrajudicial killings in the war on drugs. At one time, the Philippine president agreed to Callamard\u2019s visit but stressed that her actions would be very much restricted. As of this writing, Callamard has not been granted permission to conduct the investigation. \u2014 (Source: Asia News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

38 nations ask PH: Stop killings, probe abuses The Philippines is again come under fire from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after 38 nations reiterated their call on President Duterte to end the killings in its war on drugs. The UN body also slammed DU30\u2019s refusal to cooperate with the UNHRC in investigating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,49,79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5218,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions\/5218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}