Palace: Duterte can bar UN investigators from entering PHL

President Rodrigo Duterte can bar United Nations investigators from entering the country if he finds no basis for them to conduct a probe into the human rights situations in the Philippines, Malacañang said on Friday.

Duterte on Thursday vowed to study whether to allow UN investigators in the Philippines to investigate the deaths linked to his war on drugs and other human rights concerns.

"The President has already made a statement on that. He said if they want to come then they will have to tell him exactly their purpose. If he finds the purpose legitimate, he will allow them," presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in an interview on ANC.

Asked if Duterte will bar the UN probers from visiting the Philippines should the President find no merit in the planned investigation, Panelo said: "Apparently that would be the drift of what the President said."

Panelo earlier in the day expressed confidence that the Philippine government will be vindicated should there be an impartial investigation by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

“Should it proceed impartially, we are certain that its result will only lead to the humiliation of the investigators, as well as of Iceland and the 17 other nations supporting it, since there never have been - nor will there ever be - state-sponsored killings in this part of the world,” he said.

Panelo blasted Iceland and the 17 other countries that backed the resolution, saying they should have reached out to the Philippine government formally if they wanted to look into the alleged human rights abuses.

"You know these countries if they are really concerned with the so-called human rights abuses in this country, then they could have communicated with the government formally and we could have responded to them but they have not," he said. 

"They just rely on these false narratives coming from anti-Duterte forces and published by a few biased media outlets and elsewhere."

Authorities reported that some 6,600 drug personalities have been killed in police operations around the country since Duterte assumed office in June 2016, but local and international human rights groups said the figures could be higher.

Duterte, who is facing two communications before the International Criminal Court over the drug war, had repeatedly said he could not be indicted for extrajudicial killings, arguing there was no such crime under the country’s Revised Penal Code.

He also said authorities can only use deadly force if their lives are in danger when drug suspects resist arrest. —LDF, GMA News