Rights defenders not out to 'destroy government,' Karapatan says

MANILA, Philippines — Human rights group Karapatan said that only tyrants and human rights violators would accuse rights defenders of trying to bring down the government.

Karapatan said: “It is actually those in government who order, encourage and perpetuate extrajudicial killings, illegal or arbitrary arrests, rape, torture, and other grave violations, as well as those who engender impunity and poverty and promote the sell-out of our country’s patrimony, who are considered by the people as their enemies.”

President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesdsay night claimed during a televised address in Masbate that human rights groups are working to undermine the state.He said in Filipino “For you, human rights [defenders] is ‘the government is the enemy.’ You want to destroy the government.”

He said that his problems with human rights groups is that they never condemn crimes committed by people he thinks are “drug addicts” or “criminals.” He added rights defenders should “show concern for innocent people killed by criminals.”

CHR's mandate

The Commission on Human Rights has said since 2017 that its main function is to check potential abuse by state actors.

“It is the responsibility of the CHR to protect the rights of the people from abuse by state agents such as the government, police and the military. The CHR is mandated to ensure that the government will not abuse and violate its duty to protect the primary rights of the people,” the agency said in July 2017.

The CHR said every government agency has an obligation to protect the rights of the people—the PNP on the right to life and property, the Department of Health on the right to health, and the Department of Education on the right to education.

“But if it is the state that violated the human rights, it is the responsibility of the CHR to act as the conscience of the government,” it also said close to two years ago.

RELATED: What Duterte gets wrong about the CHR

Over 22,000 killings in 2018 were classified as “deaths under inquiry”, since the government's campaign against illegal drugs began. In late 2018, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency said it had tallied more than 4,900 "drug personalities" killed in anti-drug operations since July 2016. All of them are said to have violently resisted arrest and had forced authorities to kill them.

Human rights groups have not said that illegal drugs are not a problem, only that the government's current approach is prone to abuse and that operations against "drug personalities" should follow due process.

“We reiterate: Duterte’s sham drug war and its consequences cannot be justified by the government’s inability to resolve criminality and its distorted and unscientific analysis on the roots of the problem of the illegal drug trade,” Karapatan said. 

"As long as the government sees that the solution to social woes is through its “kill, kill, kill” approach, if it does not “nip” government corruption in the bud. By being complicit in the entry and proliferation of illegal drugs in the streets —  as long as it doesn’t solve the root causes of poverty, it will always face criticism and opposition from the people,” it also said.

Duterte said in his State of the Nation Address last year, “your concern is human rights, mine is human lives,” stating his belief that there is a distinction between the two and voicing a seemingly widespread belief that alleged criminals do not have rights.

“The protection and promotion of human rights is a fight for the preservation of a dignified human life for all. This demonstrates that there is in fact no distinction between human rights and human lives,” CHR spokesperson Jacqueline De Guia said in reaction to the president's claim.

READ: Human lives are human rights – CHR

“Human rights defense is not the sole purview of human rights groups,” Karapatan said. “Every day, every hour, several communities and individuals uphold and defend their individual and collective rights. The people are defending our rights. As long as Duterte continues to disregard these rights, he will be made accountable by the people.”

While Duterte often dismisses human rights as a concept imposed on the country by the west, the Philippines is a signatory of the Universal Declration of Human Rights, adopted and accepted as international law in 1948.