(Eagle News) — Malacanang said that “some human rights groups” may have become “tools of drug lords” in trying to stop the Philippine government’s campaign against illegal drugs and criminality.
Presidential Spokesperson gave this warning in a statement as he noted that the “attacks against the President’s war on drugs have been vicious and non-stop.”
“We therefore do not discount the possibility that some human rights groups have become unwitting tools of drug lords to hinder the strides made by the Administration,” Roque said.
The Palace official, who was also known as a staunch human rights lawyer and lawmaker before he was appointed as Presidential Spokesperson, explained that the illegal drug trade is a multi-billion peso industry that was hurt by the Duterte administration’s unrelenting war against drugs.
“Billions have been lost with the voluntary surrender of more than a million drug users, arrest of tens of thousands of drug personalities, and seizure of billion-peso clandestine drug laboratories and factories,” he said.
“To continue to do and thrive in the drug business, these drug lords can easily use their drug money to fund destabilization efforts against the government,” Roque said.
The Philippine government was recently in the news because of the preliminary examination started by the International Criminal Court on February 8 this year, that stemmed from the complaint filed by the lawyer of self-confessed hitman Edgar Matobato, Atty. Jude Sabio, before the ICC for Dutete and his officials’ alleged “crimes against humanity.”
Duterte had questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction over him, while Roque pointed out that the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had violated the principle of complementarity when the ICC had opened its preliminary examination against the Philippine president.
He earlier stressed that the move to conduct a preliminary examination on the Duterte administration’s war on drugs was “out of bounds,” as it violated the basis of the country’s consent to be part of the ICC.
“Once that [principle of complementarity] is violated, of course states will think twice about their continuing membership to the ICC,” Roque then noted.
“States, when they became part of the ICC, did not surrender their sovereignty. They did not surrender the power of their local courts to exercise jurisdiction over crimes that happened [in their countries],” he added.
The Dutete administration had already notified the United Nations that it was withdrawing from the Rome Statute, the treaty which established the ICC.
While the ICC tried to ask the Philippines to reconsider this withdrawal, it had announced that this would not stop the court from continuing its “preliminary examination” of the complaint against President Duterte and his officials since the ICC withdrawal of the Philippines would still take effect in March next year.
(Eagle News Service)
