Human rights groups urge drug war victims ‘to come forward’

Victims of the Duterte administration’s war against illegal drugs must consider a recent United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution as a call for them to come out in the open to put an end to the killings, an alliance of human rights groups said on Friday.

“We encourage other families to join us. We know you may be afraid, hurt, angry and just trying to make ends meet, but together we can do something to stop these killings,” said Emily Soriano of Rise Up for Life and for Rights.

The UNHRC resolution laid out the actions against the killings linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs, and must be understood by the victims and their families as a clarion call “… for them to come forward,” the alliance said.

In a press conference, Rise Up for Life and for Rights along with other organizations of the Philippine Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Watch also appealed to the government to cooperate with the process. Rise Up for Life and for Rights is a group of families directly affected the war on illegal drugs.

“The world is listening. We need you with us,” Soriano said.

Philippine UPR watch led by Karapatan, NUPL and NCCP, and the Rise Up for Life and for Rights hold press conference on adoption of UN Reso which lays out actions on killings linked to President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war pic.twitter.com/YX3bStE8Ph

— Margaret Claire (@MClaireLayug) July 12, 2019

Also at the briefing were representatives of Karapatan, National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), Ramento Project for Rights Defenders, International Coalition of Human Rights in the Philippines,and the office of Senator Leila de Lima.

The Iceland-led resolution instructs UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to write a comprehensive report on the situation in the Philippines and present it to the council.

It was adopted Thursday after 18 countries voted to support it.

Another 14 nations,  including the Philippines, voted against it, while 15 countries abstained from the vote.

According to the Philippine National Police (PNP), more than 6,000 drug suspects, all of whom resisted arrest, had been killed in police operations from July 1, 2016 to May 31, 2019.

Activists, however, claimed that the number of drug war deaths was had risen to 27,000 since President Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016.

PNP chief Police General Oscar Albayalde had challenged the UNHRC to “show the names” of the more than 20,000 people allegedly killed  in the Duterte government's drug campaign. — VDS, GMA News