De Lima: Trump taking a page out of Duterte’s ‘Dictator’s Handbook’

Senator Leila De Lima on Saturday lamented the United States' move to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, a year before its term expires.

In a statement, De Lima said that the US seems to be taking a page out of what she calls President Rodrigo Duterte's "Dictator's Handbook."

"It is too bad that the US, instead of being a leader of the free world and a true defender of human rights, seems to be taking a page out of Duterte’s Dictator’s Handbook," she said.

De Lima, currently detained at the PNP Custodial Center at Camp Crame, said that the withdrawal "speaks volumes" about the state of human rights in the US under the leadership of President Donald Trump.

She likened it to when Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is currently looking into whether it has jurisdiction to probe allegations of state-sanctioned killings in his deadly war on drugs.

"Just like Duterte when he unilaterally manifested the Philippines’ withdrawal from the ICC, the Trump administration wants their people, along with the rest of the world, to believe the bald-faced lie that he did it for benevolent and morally right reasons," she said.

"They claim that they withdrew in order to promote human rights, with the US’s UN Ambassador, Nikki Hailey, calling the Council a 'protector of human-rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias,' and that 'America should not provide it with any credibility'," De Lima added.

She said that the truth was that the two leaders turned their backs on their international obligations to "save their own respective hides."

"Trump did it to pre-empt his being called out for his own oppressive policies, the most recent being his order to separate minor children of illegal immigrants from their parents, and to be held, in the tens of thousands, inside facilities that have been likened to 'chain-link cages'," she said.

"While such heartless move, a policy of 'government-child abuse,' as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein has put it, has since been taken back, it mirrors the President’s anti-human rights proclivities," she added.

De Lima said that Duterte in turn was hiding from his responsibilities for the "human rights abuses he heaped upon the Filipino people."

She also claimed that Duterte's policies and campaigns did not even cause any real progress.

Citing a survey by the Social Weather Stations, De Lima pointed out that 40 percent of Filipinos nationwide were reported to believe that drug addicts still proliferate in their neighborhoods despite the bloody war on drugs, and that the fear of unsafe streets in Mindanao increased by 13 points to 48 percent in March 2018 despite the region being placed under marital law.

She added that the recent targeting of tambay has already resulted in a fatality.

"May magpapaloko pa ba kay Duterte?  By now, everybody should already see that this man is out to protect no one but himself, his family and his friends – hindi pa ba s’ya napapagod sa kunwaring pag-alis pero pagbabalik din sa pwesto ng mga tiwaling miyembro ng kanyang administrasyon?" she said. — MDM, GMA News