Headlines

Palace accuses HRW of cultural insensitivity over stinging drug war criticism

March 27, 2017 | 4:42pm

Palace accuses HRW of cultural insensitivity over stinging drug war criticism

Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) escort alleged drug suspects in a continuing raid at an informal settlers' community inside the sprawling compound of a public cemetery Thursday, March 16, 2017 in suburban Quezon city northeast of Manila, Philippines. The drug raid came at a time that a Philippine lawmaker has filed an impeachment complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte for the thousands of deaths in his anti-drug crackdown and for alleged corruption.

AP Photo / Bullit Marquez

MANILA, Philipines — Malacañang Monday denied the claim of a Human Rights Watch (HRW) official that President Rodrigo Duterte has “contempt for lives” as it accused the group of “deep insensitivity to others’ cultures.”

HRW deputy director for Asia Phelim Kine claimed in an online post on Sunday that Duterte has finally acknowledged that his campaign against drugs is “in fact a war on the poor”

Kine said Duterte employed a “grotesque logic” and that his crackdown on illegal drugs showed his “contempt for lives.” Majority of the 7,000 people who died because of the drug war were urban slum dwellers, he added.

“Duterte’s admission ends the perverse fiction that he and his government have sought to perpetuate over the past nine months that the victims of the drug war - many of whose bodies are found on street corners wrapped in packing tape, riddled with bullets or perforated with stab wounds - have been ‘drug lords,’” the HRW official said in a Twitter post.

Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella denied Kine’s statements and asked the HRW not to meddle with the Philippines’ internal affairs.

“Nothing can be farther from the truth than the HRW accusation that President Duterte has ‘contempt for lives.’ In fact, eight out of ten Filipinos living in Metro Manila now feel safer and more secure under his administration,” Abella said, referring to a Pulse Asia survey conducted last December.

“HRW and similar other organizations should, therefore, be more circumspect about meddling in the country’s domestic affairs. Their lack of appreciation of the context and local reality show a deep insensitivity to other cultures,” he added.

Abella also denied that the anti-drug war is targeting the poor.

“The war on drugs is not targeted at any particular segment of society. However, the most prevalent drug in the Philippines is shabu, dubbed as poor man’s cocaine,” Duterte’s spokesman said.

“The supply, largely from outside the Philippines, is in great demand from users and distributors both coming from poor families. Poverty, however, does not justify the use and selling of shabu,” he added.

Abella said Duterte would continue to clean up the streets of drug users, pushers and dealers “regardless of their socioeconomic status in life.”

HRW, a watchdog based in New York, previously said that the Philippines is in the midst of a “human rights calamity” because of drug-related killings. The group also accused the police of carrying out the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects and planting evidence in crime scenes.

Duterte has denied endorsing summary executions but encouraged policemen to shoot drug suspects if they feel that their lives are in danger. The president also vowed to continue clamping down on illegal drugs until the last drug pusher is out of the streets.