By Jesus Sievert
THE issue of having a UN-backed human rights group investigate the country’s human rights situation only became a focal point when President Duterte started his relentless war on drugs upon his assumption into office in 2016.
It even became a magnet for foreign investigative scope when it was notoriously described as bloody, when the count of dead bodies was adding up and incidental killings rising, too, characterized as collateral damage.
Three years into his presidency and Duterte is just as determined and fierce in waging war against what appears to be a never ending flow of drugs into the country that, instead of being reported to the authorities, are being peddled with impunity destroying the social fabric that binds us together and compromising the future of young Filipinos.
Thus, I understand every time Duterte expresses his outrage against the proliferation and use of drugs because we are seeing today that many parents are working abroad to be able to earn sufficient amount of money to provide comfortable living for their families, but also leaving behind vulnerable children that may very well fall prey to drug vultures abounding in the whole country today.
This is what some sanctimonious human rights group, the latest of which is the UN Human Rights Council, does not understand. President Duterte is taking to heart his moral obligation as leader of the country to protect the lives of innocent Filipinos and if it takes for his administration’s police force to kill the menace and evil of society, then so be it. I think he knows what he is doing.
I am not expressing my opposition to foreign human rights group or Western countries advocating for the respect of human rights if they can just be objective in their approach. By being objective it shall be without discrimination, especially knowing that human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status.
But why are foreign human rights group so obsessed at probing into the Philippines’ human rights situation and so indifferent to the massive and systematic human rights violations taking place at the US southern border with Mexico, where the US Border Patrol is holding many children, including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in jail-like border facilities for weeks at a time without contact with family members, or regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds? Many are dying, too, so do these not brazenly violate federal and international laws?
As a third world country, thank goodness that ours is still “a government of laws, not of men” that even Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin has implied that our justice system is “robust” and insists that other countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of the Philippines. Following the rule of law, we are simply eliminating an evil that tends to destroy the future of our country and its youth, as oppose to preachy human rights advocates who violate their very own visions of a world where every person lives with dignity, freedom, justice, equality and peace.