HRW ‘intentionally misleading’ public on PHL human rights situation, says Cayetano

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is "intentionally misleading" the public by saying that the Philippines' human rights situation is at its worst since the regime of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said.

“We will not allow Human Rights Watch to portray an unfair and unjust image of our country nor will we let it question the strength of our democracy,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said in a statement on Sunday.

His remarks come after the international rights watchdog said that President Rodrigo Duterte has "plunged" the country's human rights crisis to its worst since the Marcos administration.

According to the HRW global report on human rights in 2017, the Philippines made an "especially brazen and deadly example of a populist challenge to human rights."

In his statement, Cayetano claimed HRW "politicized" the issue without any significant research work, as it claimed that 12,000 individuals—mostly members of urban poor communities including children—were killed under the government's campaign against illegal drugs.

“Human Rights Watch has politicized the issue for its own gain and has not done any real research, study or investigation on the human rights situation in the Philippines,” he said.

Cayetano then challenged the HRW to provide proof that the 12,000 individuals were all "victims" of the campaign against illegal drugs, citing government data recorded 3,968 personalities killed in 80,683 anti-illegal drugs operations from July 1, 2016 to December 27, 2017.

In October, Cayetano claimed that every single one of the thousands of individuals killed during police operations were drug dealers, and that they all shot at authorities, prompting the police to return fire.

“Human Rights Watch has been deliberately misrepresenting the figures to make it appear that there exists a culture of impunity in the Philippines and that the country’s democratic institutions are at risk... These assertions are unfair to the Philippines and to the Filipino people," he said.

“Democracy has never been more alive in the Philippines as we finally we have a government that we can really say is of the people and for the people and not for the rich and the powerful alone,” he added.

Just recently, however, several groups have expressed alarm that the administration is trying to silence its critics, especially with the recent decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to revoke the incorporation papers of Rappler Inc. for supposedly failing to comply with foreign equity restrictions on mass media.

READ: Wall Street Journal: Duterte's move to silence media, critics undermines democracy

Both Duterte and SEC Commissioner Teresita Herbosa have denied that the decision was backed by political pressure.

In the same statement, Cayetano also cited the results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, showing that the net satisfaction rating of the Duterte administration rose to a record high in the fourth quarter of 2017. — Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/BM, GMA News