Palace suspects human rights groups being used by drug lords

Malacañang is not discounting the possibility that some human rights groups are being used by drug lords to malign President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

Echoing the statement of Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano last week, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Monday said the attacks against the war on drugs “have been vicious and non-stop.”

“We therefore do not discount the possibility that some human rights groups have become unwitting tools of drug lords to hinder the strides made by the administration,” Roque said in a statement.

“To continue to do and thrive in the drug business, these drug lords can easily use their drug money to fund destabilization efforts against the government,” he added.

In his statement, Cayetano did not name the non-government organizations whom he slammed for not doing an objective probe into the country’s human rights situation.

He said the findings released by these groups were not a result of a “legitimate and scientific investigation.”

Criticisms against the drug war have reached the International Criminal Court (ICC), which opened last month a preliminary examination on allegations that Duterte and senior administration officials have committed crimes against humanity due to the thousands of killings of drug personalities.

Over a month later, Duterte announced he was withdrawing the Philippines from the ICC because of the court's “baseless, unprecedented and outrageous attacks” against him and his administration and its alleged attempt of the ICC prosecutor to place him under the tribunal’s jurisdiction.

The Palace said the move to conduct a preliminary examination on the Duterte administration's war on drugs violated the basis of the country's consent to be part of the ICC, arguing Philippine courts are able and willing to exercise jurisdiction over criminal cases.

“The illegal drug trade is a multi-billion-peso industry and billions have been lost with the voluntary surrender of more than a million drug users, arrest of tens of thousands of drug personalities, and seizure of billion-peso clandestine drug laboratories and factories,” Roque said.

Duterte said the ICC cannot exercise jurisdiction on the communication filed by lawyer Jude Sabio in April last year because the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, is not enforceable in the Philippines because it was not published in the government's publication or commercial newspaper.

Following Duterte's announcement, the ICC said the development "will not affect the continuation of the preliminary examination process" and for a state party like the Philippines "to cooperate with the Court in relation to an investigation initiated before the withdrawal came into effect."

Under Article 127 of the Rome Statute that established the ICC, the effectivity of the withdrawal is only a year after the notification which the Philippines made in a letter delivered to the United Nations Secretary General, the depositary of the treaty, on March 15.

Duterte has also urged other countries to get out of the ICC. —ALG, GMA News