DAVAO CITY—Incoming Press Secretary Salvador Panelo on Tuesday assured the media that President-elect Rodrigo Duterte won’t condone any killings of journalists in the country as he lambasted the UN special rapporteurs for “standing on the wrong premise” with their claim that the president-elect was instigating violence.
“The president-elect won’t tolerate nor allow the killing of journalists. Whether the journalist is engaged in corruption or not—he/she remains a citizen of the republic and the law will have to be applied to those who violate the law. [Duterte] will not condone any injury or killing of any journalist. He will prosecute them to the fullest under the law,” Panelo told The Standard in a phone interview on Tuesday.
“What the UN rapporteur was saying is that he [Duterte] was inciting deadly violence, but the rapporteur was making the statements based on the wrong premise. That statement’ s not only a dare, it was misplayed. It’s baseless,” Panelo said.
On Monday, two UN human rights advocates condemned Duterte for his rather “irresponsible” statements.
“A message of this nature amounts to incitement to violence and killing, in a nation already ranked as the second-deadliest country for journalists,” UN Special Rapporteur on summary executions, Cristof Heyns said in a statement sent to The Standard.
“These comments are irresponsible in the extreme, and unbecoming of any leader, let alone someone who is to assume the position of the leader of a country that calls itself democratic.”
UN Special Rapporteur on freedom opinion and expression, David Kaye, said, “Justifying the killings of journalists on the basis of how they conduct their professional activities can be understood as a permissive signal to potential killers that the murder of journalists is acceptable in certain circumstances and would not be punished.”
“This position is even more disturbing when one considers that Philippines is still struggling to ensure accountability to notorious cases of violence against journalists, such as the Maguindanao massacre,” the human rights expert added.
Duterte had a falling out with media during a news conference Thursday night, after the France-based Reporters Without Borders called on the local press to boycott him for saying that it was all right to kill corrupt journalists.
Although no local news organization heeded the call, Duterte angrily challenged journalists covering him to abandon their coverage and leave Davao City, saying he would course his messages through the government station PTV 4.
Clarifying Duterte’s previous statements, Panelo said that the president “never said that killing journalists is justified on the basis of corruption.”
“What he says is that while there are many journalists killed by the reason of their advocacies, there are also journalists who were killed on the basis of corruption. We are not saying that you have to be a journalist or a lawyer or a doctor or a businessman—what he is saying is that if you commit a wrong doing you open yourself to retaliation by means of you being killed, maimed or injured, and not because you are a journalist. But because you did something wrong,” he said.
Panelo also defended the presient-elect, whose recent statements on drug pushers has gained the ire of UN officials for promising to pay a P3-million bounty to police and military officials for every drug lord they kill.
In the statement sent on Monday, Heyns said that the talk of ‘dead or alive’ has no role to play in any state that claims to uphold human rights in law enforcement.
Panelo said that “certainly, the president elect will not allow nor condone salvaging of any criminal.”
“What we are saying is that the police officers can make arrest if on the part of the policeman, they have evidence that they are drug lords or drug pushers. On the part of the citizens, if these drug lords are committing a crime unde r their presence that is allowed under the law. They will be given due process. They will be arrested,” Panelo said.