BEFORE the opposition gloats over the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) resolution to investigate human rights violations in the Philippines, two things need stressing and adverting to.
One, it was a minority (of 18) decision as more than half (14+15=29) either voted against or abstained. That the minority should carry the day points to a flaw in the Council’s decision-making protocol. I’ll leave that to their conscience.
Two, the resolution is to look into human rights violations, not extra-judicial killings specifically. The UN Council has more sense than the opposition that has prejudged the killings as extrajudicial in their cry for intervention to their allies in the US and Europe.
For sure there are killings connected with the drug war. Hence there is need to investigate, gather evidence, and file the appropriate cases in court. What is left to question is the propriety of the resolution.
Like what exactly is the country’s Commission on Human Rights (CHR) doing? It’s been three years of the drug war. Why has the CHR not championed the investigation and the bringing to justice of alleged perpetrators of the crime?
And if the yellows were more concerned with human rights violations than with their political and economic interests, why have they not allied with the CHR in investigating alleged state-ordered killings?
Instead both groups joined tears in crying on mainstream media (that they control) for investigation by the UN. Isn’t this a surrender of independence, of sovereignty, a loss of self-esteem?
Instead of showing the world that we are capable of championing the solution of our own problems, they toss self-esteem to the wind and cry like babies to former colonizers and violators of our rights to our own homeland.
Instead of condemning Iceland’s resolution as an insult to our honor as a sovereign people, they condemn the insulting words against Iceland of a President who defends our honor as a self-respecting sovereign people.
The more stones they throw at the President the more popular the latter becomes. It can only mean people don’t believe them. The more reason they should work within the system to correct the “wrongs” and reinforce the “rights” of this administration. This way they can convince people that they are for the good of the greater number and not just for getting back to power by thumbing Duterte down any which way.
The killings are too numerous to be ignored and should be investigated. But not by foreigners with vested interests of their own. To be sovereign is to be mature enough politically to solve our own problems. And to be mature is to have the self-esteem to champion the cause of protecting and defending human rights in our homeland.