Palace: UN experts’ call for int’l probe on PHL killings intellectually challenged, outrageous

Malacañang on Saturday said the call of United Nations human rights experts for an international investigation into unlawful deaths and police killings was "intellectually challenged" and an "outrageous interference" to Philippine sovereignty.

"The reasons foisted by them for the aforesaid investigation have been discredited and repudiated by the very nation they pretend to care about," said Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo in a statement.

"Let the enemies of the state and their supporters from foreign soil be forewarned that no amount of destructive narratives against this government will envelope it with the appearance of pretended truth to hoodwink the Filipino people in embracing it," he added.

Duterte came to power in 2016 promising to eradicate drugs and crime, and this year said he would step up that campaign.

The 11 independent experts accused President Rodrigo Duterte of publicly intimidating activists and Supreme Court judges, degrading women and inciting violence against alleged drug pushers and others.

The experts urged the UN Human Rights Council, whose 47 member states open a three-week session on June 24, to launch an independent inquiry into what they called a sharp deterioration in human rights across the country.

In response, Panelo insisted that the judiciary sees to it that the law is applied equally to all.

"The eleven (11) UN Special Rapporteurs' act of peddling a biased and absolutely false recital of facts, adulterated with malicious imputations against the constituted authorities, smacks of unpardonable intrusions on our sovereignty," he said.

Panelo said the allegations being presented by the UN experts, who he called as "foreign propagandists masquerading as human right protectors," are based on false and adulterated information.

Panelo said government critics who have spoken against the Duterte administration's contrversial and deadly war on drugs have been "overwhelmingly rejected" by the Philippine electorate when they lost in last May's polls.

"These special rapporteurs should by this time realize that they, who believed in the untruthful advocacies of the electorally vanquished pretenders, have likewise been demolished, beyond redemption," he said. — MDM, GMA News