HUMAN Rights advocates on Monday slammed President Rodrigo Duterte for threatening to add them to his list of targets in his bloody war against drugs, saying such remarks were “very dangerous”.
In a phone patch interview aired over ANC Headstart, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine said that he was concerned for the life of his fellow human rights advocates after Duterte made his threat.
“President Duterte’s statement are very dangerous,” Kine said.
“President Duterte’s threat to add human rights activists to the target list of his abusive war on drugs constitutes a clear and present danger to the safety of activists who rightly express concern about a government-sanctioned killing campaign,” Kine said in a separate statement sent on the same day.
He said Duterte, as the Leader of the State, must protect the lives of Filipinos and not threaten them with extrajudicial violence.
“The scary fact is that people whom the President threatens with death, including suspected drug dealers and drug users, are dying in large numbers, so human rights activists have a good reason to be concerned when the President appears to add them to hit list,” Kine said.
Wilnor Papa, campaign coordinator of Amnesty International Philippines, said Duterte should not “demonize human rights work.”
“You do not vilify human rights activists. We’re talking here of people and not of pigs or corn,” Papa said in the same interview.
He said Duterte is a President and whatever he says before the public is assumed to be policy.
He said human rights advocates were not against the President’s campaign against crime but his method of killing alleged drug users and dealers.
He said human rights activists like them were enemies but partners to protect the lives of the Filipinos.
“Human rights activists are your effective partners. We are not your enemies,” Papa said.
IDEFEND, another human rights group, also expressed dismay over Duterte’s threat.
“President Duterte threatened to kill human rights defenders criticizing his war on drugs,” the group said in a statement.
“And so it is revealed. The main program of the President for this country is to kill. Kill suspected drug peddlers yesterday, human rights activists today, kill all opposition voices tomorrow.”
Network Against Killings in the Philippines urged Duterte to take back his statement so as not to give police officers and the death squads the impression that human rights advocates were on his list of people that also should be targeted.
“Human rights activists are not the enemy,” the group said.