(Eagle News)—-Senator Risa Hontiveros said President Rodrigo Duterte was the “single biggest threat to human rights in the Philippines.”
Hontiveros’ statement came on Dec. 10, Monday, a date the United Nations declared as International Human Rights Day.
“The President has singlehandedly rolled back human rights safeguards and made the country a haven for human rights violators,” she said.
Hontiveros noted what she said was the “bloody and abusive” war on drugs, which she said “has set into motion the killing of thousands, most of whom are poor people..”
“This while big-time druglords like Peter Lim continue to be free and billions of pesos worth of shabu are smuggled into our country aided by corrupt government officials,” she said.
She said under the Duterte administration, “the rule of law is grossly distorted in favor of the corrupt, political cronies and plunderers,” and the right to dissent “has been denigrated into plots to destabilize the government.”
She said women’s rights and the Catholic church were also not spared.
“The justice system is mostly efficient when legally harassing members of the opposition and the critical media, but grinds to a complete halt when dealing with the likes of Imelda Marcos. And on the few occasions that justice has actually prevailed, such as our important victory in the Kian delos Santos case, we have owed it to the people’s untiring vigilance, which made the whitewashing of the extrajudicial killing untenable,” she said.
“We cannot continue treading this path. I call on the people to push back and stand up against the threat to our human rights. When the institutions we build to protect us are used against us, we prove aspiring tyrants wrong and take them back,” she added.
